Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction with help from Sandy Hook families

[Muda69]

https://apnews.com/article/onion-buys-infowars-alex-jones-6496f198d141c991087dcd937b3588e9

Quote

The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.

The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive. The sale price was not immediately disclosed. The Onion said its “exclusive launch advertiser” will be the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Everytown will continue to raise awareness on InfoWars’ channels about gun violence prevention and present actual solutions to our nation’s gun violence crisis, including bipartisan, common-sense measures and public safety initiatives backed by Everytown,” The Onion said in a statement Thursday.

Jones confirmed The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars in a social media video Thursday and said he planned to file legal challenges to stop it.

“Last broadcast now live from Infowars studios. They are in the building. Are ordering shutdown without court approval,” Jones said on the social platform X.

Jones was broadcasting live from the Infowars studio Thursday morning and appeared distraught, putting his head in his hand at his desk.

Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. Both supporters and detractors of Jones had expressed interest in buying Infowars. The other bidders have not been disclosed.

The Onion, a satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd, bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers.

Jones has been saying on his show that if his detractors bought Infowars, he would move his daily broadcasts and product sales to a new studio, websites and social media accounts that he has already set up. He also said that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms.

Relatives of many of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting Jones and his company for defamation and emotional distress for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers.

The lawsuits were filed in Connecticut and Texas. Lawyers for the families in the Connecticut lawsuit said they worked with The Onion to try to acquire Infowars.

This is quite funny.  Can't wait to see what kind of headlines and stories The Onion puts up on the new infowars.

 

[Cloudy14]

from what I heard, this isn't going through any more.

[swordfish]

It appears to be under judicial review for some reason.  SF has never been a fan or steady reader of either website, but still pretty confused how a guy running a website can be liable for defamation and over a billion dollars for broadcasting an opinion - right or wrong.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/15/alex-jones-infowars-auction-the-onion-00190003

The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones’ Infowars platform is under review by a federal bankruptcy judge after Jones and his lawyers complained about how an auction was conducted.

The satirical news outlet was announced as the winning bidder on Thursday in an auction that is part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy. Hours later, Infowars headquarters in Austin, Texas and its websites were shut down and Jones was broadcasting from a new studio he had set up before the bankruptcy auction. By Friday morning, Infowars and its websites were back up and running for reasons that were not entirely clear.

At a hastily called court hearing in Houston on Thursday, Judge Christopher Lopez ordered another hearing to be held next week. He wants to know what happened with the auction and how the bankruptcy trustee chose The Onion over the only other bidder — a company affiliated with a Jones product-selling website.

A court hearing is typically held after a bankruptcy auction to finalize the winning bids and sales, and to hear any objections, so the process in Jones’ case hasn’t strayed far from the usual — yet.

[Muda69]

And update from The Onion's CEO: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-onion-won-the-auction-for-infowars-and-was-given-clear-next-steps-to-complete-the-sale-ceo-says-222134454.html

Quote

After a judge on Thursday ordered an evidentiary hearing into The Onion's winning bid to purchase Infowars, Alex Jones’ site resumed operations and claimed the sale has been blocked. But Onion CEO Ben Collins countered this in an update posted on Bluesky and X on Saturday, writing, “We left the hearing with clear next steps to complete the sale.” According to Collins, a court date has been set for a week from Monday, when the process is expected to be completed, and Infowars asked for permission to continue publishing in the meantime. “The long and short of it: We won the auction and — you're not going to believe this — the previous InfoWars folks aren't taking it well,” Collins wrote.

“On Thursday, the person overseeing the auction told us that The Onion’s bid for InfoWars, along with the Connecticut Sandy Hook families, won,” Collins wrote in the thread. “We haven’t heard anything that changed that — except, of course, from the guys currently running InfoWars, doing InfoWars stuff.” Jones has unsurprisingly called the auction “rigged,” and in a livestream on X said that lawyers for Elon Musk’s social media site have gotten involved and attended the hearing, Mother Jones reported.

The Onion only went up against one other bidder in the auction for Infowars: First United American Companies, which is associated with a website that sells Jones’ supplements. The company reportedly bid $3.5 million. The dollar amount of Global Tetrahedron’s (The Onion’s parent company) bid has not been disclosed, but it’s been backed by families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims. Per Bloomberg, trustee Christopher Murray, who is liquidating Jones’ estate, said these families have “agreed to waive their potential recovery and give it to all other unsecured creditors” that Jones owes.

“There was a status conference with the judge overseeing the auction on Thursday, shortly after we were deemed winners,” Collins, who formerly covered disinformation and online extremism as a reporter for NBC News, wrote in the thread on Saturday. “The judge had some questions about process and some assets. We’re glad he’s doing that, since our bid with the families is clearly the best and transparency is even better.” He added further down: “We expected all of this, obviously. Buying this site was always going to be fun later on, but annoying right away. The fun part is still to come.”

Collins’ plan for Infowars is for it to “relaunch as the dumbest website on the internet.” The nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety will reportedly be the sole advertiser at launch.

 

[swordfish]

That was news on Saturday (They didn't have the cash) - Here is yesterday's update.....

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/alex-jones-affiliated-company-challenges-onions-infowars-purchase-2024-11-18/

NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters) - A losing bidder connected to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones challenged on Monday the Onion's purchase of Jones' Infowars website, saying the parody news site won a rigged bankruptcy auction and offered half as much cash as its bid.

First American United Companies, which is affiliated with Jones' dietary supplements businesses, asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston to disqualify the bid by the Onion and name its own $3.5-million bid as the winner.

 

Jones was forced to auction his assets, including Infowars, in bankruptcy, after courts ordered him to pay $1.5 billion for defaming the families of 20 students and six staff members killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, by making false claims that the shooting was staged.

 

First American United Companies said in a court filing that a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee mishandled the auction by giving the Onion credit for backing by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, whose lawsuits drove Jones into bankruptcy in 2022.

"Its effect is to depress and lower the amount the Onion would need to bid in cash to ensure that it was the winning bid," First American United Companies said in its objection. "This was not simply collaboration, this was outright collusive bid rigging."

The Onion's winning bid for Infowars included $1.75 million in cash, according to the objection.

Christopher Murray, the bankruptcy trustee charged with selling Jones' assets, said in a court response on Monday that First United American Companies' objection was "a disappointed bidder's improper attempt to influence an otherwise fair and open auction process." Murray said his team would not be bullied into accepting an "inferior bid."

 

The Onion's bid was valued at $7 million, in large part because a majority of the Sandy Hook families agreed to accept a percentage of future revenues from the new Infowars instead of taking an up-front payment from the sale, according to Murray.

The Onion did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for some of the Sandy Hook families declined to comment.

The Onion announced on Thursday it won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars' assets, and pledged to replace the website's "relentless barrage of disinformation" with the Onion's "noticeably less hateful disinformation."

Lopez, who is overseeing the bankruptcy, said at a court hearing on Thursday that he had concerns about the auction's transparency. The judge said he will schedule a further hearing to gather more information and consider whether to approve the sale.

Infowars was briefly shut down after the sale was announced, but was back online within a day. Murray had said at Thursday's hearing that he shut down the business to ensure that its assets were not damaged or taken before the property could be transferred to the Onion.

 

If the sale is approved, the Onion would acquire Infowars' intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and production equipment.

The Connecticut-based families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims said they agreed to forgo some payment from the defamation judgments to boost the Onion's bid and prevent other right-wing content creators from continuing to promote conspiracy theories on Infowars. Other families who have sued Jones in Texas - some of whom have not yet gone to trial - did not agree to forgo payment from the Onion's bid.

Jones claimed for years that the massacre was a hoax staged with actors as part of a government plot to seize Americans' guns. He has since acknowledged the shooting occurred, but the families, who said Jones cashed in for years off his lies, sued him for defamation.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have ruled that Jones intentionally defamed the families. Lopez previously ruled that those judgments could not be legally discharged in bankruptcy, meaning that Jones remains on the hook for most of the judgments even after Infowars is sold.

 

[swordfish]

The latest....

https://apnews.com/article/alex-jones-infowars-auction-onion-newtown-8352f1e442c5d37f64a798416ff5afa8

A bankruptcy judge on Monday delayed a hearing in conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ effort to stop the satirical news outlet The Onion from buying Infowars, keeping the auction sale up in the air for at least another few weeks.

Jones alleges fraud and collusion marred the bankruptcy auction that resulted in The Onion being named the winning bidder over a company affiliated with him. A trustee overseeing the auction denies the allegations and accuses Jones of launching a smear campaign because he didn’t like the outcome.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez had been scheduled to hear an emergency motion to disqualify The Onion’s bid on Monday, but put it off until either Dec. 9 or Dec. 17. That’s also when the judge will hear arguments on the trustee’s request to approve the sale of Infowars to The Onion. Lopez said it made sense to have one hearing on both requests.

 

[Lemmy]

Wow is it difficult to read reuters or AP stories and come to any conclusion about what is actually happening.  So many half-truths and key details missing.  Some key details that do not paint the trustee in this case in a very positive manner and may actually be criminal.

. The trustee's are actually DOJ employees, not part of the judiciary.  They are supposed to maximize the value for creditors and oversee the process but are not final arbiters.  If you ever listen Alex Jones, it wouldn't take long to realize he really isn't a fan of the federal government and it stands to reason they don't like him either.  

. Trustee in this case changed the auction bidding process outside of the judges orders.  Instead of open auction with cash coming from highest bidder, the auction was changed to bids being given to trustee and he would decide who had the best offer for the creditors regardless of bid price(🤔)

.Trustee awards Onion infowars studio, name, etc... even though they have lower bid.  Stranger yet, they don't pay cash they bid with credit from another case in Connecticut in which the same creditor's are seeking more money.  Seems like satire, they are using future funds that the creditors may receive to allegedly pay creditors now in exchange for infowars studio and name or put another way they aren't paying anything. 

.Trustee immediately shuts infowars studio(with no court order) and kicks everyone out of building on 11/14 and takes down ip addresss. 

.Emergency hearing held next day, judge not pleased with trustee's action and gives studio and all naming rights back to Alex Jones.  Evidentiary hearing scheduled for 12/9 and 12/17 while Alex Jones continues to broadcast to million's of people every day.  

 

[swordfish]

https://nypost.com/2024/12/11/media/judge-rejects-sale-of-alex-jones-infowars-to-the-onion-in-dispute-over-bankruptcy-auction/

A federal judge on Tuesday night rejected the sale of the conspiracy platform Infowars to The Onion satirical news outlet after Alex Jones claimed that a recent bankruptcy auction was fraught with illegal collusion.

The Onion was named the winning bidder on Nov. 14 over a company affiliated with Jones.

US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez’s decision means Jones can stay at Infowars in Austin, Texas. The Onion had planned to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January as a parody.

At the end of a lengthy two-day hearing in a Texas courtroom, Lopez criticized the auction process as flawed and said the outcome “left a lot of money on the table” for families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.