November 15, 2024

As you probably know by now, The Onion was named the winning bidder for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction yesterday. What you may not know is that their bid was backed by families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, and the deal still may not go through. Via the Associated Press:

The purchase would turn over Jones’ company, which for decades has peddled in conspiracy and misinformation, to a humor website that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody. But the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case said Thursday that he had concerns about how the auction was conducted and ordered a hearing for next week after complaints by lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a $3.5 million bid.

[...] At a court hearing Thursday afternoon in Houston, the trustee who oversaw the auction, Christopher Murray, acknowledged that The Onion did not have the highest bid but said it was a better deal overall because some of the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to pay Jones’ other creditors. First United American Companies, a business affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling websites, submitted the only other bid. The trustee said he could not put a dollar amount on The Onion’s bid.

Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said.

The trustee said he followed the judge’s auction rules laid out in a September order made the overbidding round optional. But Lopez said he was surprised such a round of bidding was not held and that he had concerns about transparency.

We'll see who wins the next round: Psycho Pond Scum, or the parents whose lives he didn't think twice about ruining.

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