Judge orders hearing to review Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’s InfoWars

kersploosh@sh.itjust.works · 8 days ago

Judge orders hearing to review Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’s InfoWars

CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe · edit-2 7 days ago

The claim I’m hearing is that the rules of the auction were changed at the last minute; it went from a regular auction to an anonymous “sealed bid” auction, where bids had to be placed the week prior. The sealed bids were put before the judge, and there were higher bids than Onion (a laughable $200K), but the people running the auction choose The Onion as the winning bid, anyway. The higher bids were by conservative groups, to buy InfoWars & keep it running. The Onion was chosen to assume ownership for purposes of humiliation & brand destruction, even though they only bid $200K.

This court case is a reaction to people running an auction based on how they feel, allegedly. Liquidation auction efforts, logically, should pursue the option that pays out the most money.

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 7 days ago

Where exactly are you hearing all this? Sources please.

But the trustee who oversaw the auction said he followed the judge’s rules laid out in a September order, which made the overbidding round optional.

The exact bid amount offered by the Onion for InfoWars remains unknown, but it has been reported it was lower than First United American’s bid of $3.5m. The Onion’s offer was seen as a better deal because some of the related Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to help pay off Jones’s other creditors.

It was reported on Thursday that the Onion’s purchase of InfoWars received support from families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, to whom Jones owes $1.4bn in defamation judgments after he falsely claimed the 2012 school massacre was a hoax.

azertyfun@sh.itjust.works · 7 days ago

Liquidation auction efforts, logically, should pursue the option that pays out the most money.

To whom?

The money is going to Jones’s victims. The victims seem fine getting less money if it means InfoWars goes to someone who will destroy the brand rather than some conservatives who will pump money into it to further destroy their lives.

Typical American “justice”. Only first world country where the death penalty is in vigor because “this is what the victims would want”, but when a plaintiff looks like they might actually get a small moral win against fascists suddenly the Law is a dispassionate machine.

booly@sh.itjust.works · 7 days ago

To whom?

All the creditors, as an entire body.

The victims seem fine getting less money

To be clear, it’s only some of the victims that have said they’re fine with less money. The trustee has a responsibility to make sure that the creditor body as a whole gets the most money. If some subset of creditors (the families willing to reduce their claims if the Onion buys the assets) are willing to reduce their claims as part of the bid, great, they should add that money to the pile and consider it as part of the bid.

But the families that do agree to take less money can’t force the other families to take less money. It has to be voluntary for everyone.

And it sounds like the Jones-affiliated bidder is complaining about the auction procedures. If they followed the already-approved procedures perfectly, there’s not much to talk about there. But if they changed the procedures at the last minute, or if the actual auction followed procedures that weren’t described in the approved procedures (such as accepting creditors’ reduction of their claims as part of the bid, or not allowing “topping bids” after the sealed bids were submitted), then it’s normal to hold a hearing to make a decision on whether the auction followed the right procedures.