Onions’s CEO was disappointed by the judge’s decision; however, the satirical website is interested in purchasing Infowars.
A United States federal judge has ruled that the bankruptcy auction process did not yield the best possible bids on the sale of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars, a satirical website that lost its purchase bid.
But Lopez said the bankruptcy court-appointed trustee who ran the auction made “a good-faith error” in rushing to seek final offers for Infowars rather than encouraging more back-and-forth bidding between The Onion and a company affiliated with Jones, which was the runner-up.
“This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” the judge said at the end of a two-day hearing in Houston, Texas.”It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.”
Lopez said he did not want another auction and left it up to the trustee who oversaw the auction to determine the next steps. But Jones and First American United Companies, his partner, had argued that the whole sale process was affected. The Onion received major credit for having the backing of families that won high-value court verdicts against Jones.
In 2022, Jones filed for bankruptcy and liquidated assets. He had to pay over $1.3 billion to the families of 20 children and six adults who lost their lives in the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
Jones continued calling the shooting a hoax by actors staged for increased gun control. Many parents of the victims testified in Court that they were traumatized because of Jones’s conspiracies and threats from his followers. Jones has since acknowledged that the Connecticut school shooting happened.
