The Onion’s Bid to Buy Alex Jones’ Infowars Rejected by Federal Bankruptcy Judge
The Onion’s bid to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars and turn it into a parody site has been shut down. For now, at least.
Ignoring the express endorsement by families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims, on Tuesday a federal bankruptcy judge rejected the deal, asserting in his ruling that it “left a lot of money on the table” for those very same families.
Judge Christopher Lopez said during the hearing, held Tuesday night in Austin, that The Onion parent company Global Tetrahedron, was wrongly named the winner of the auction to buy the site because it didn’t submit the best offer.
The Onion’s $7 million bid would have seen Global Tetrahedron put up $1.75 million; families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims were to put up the rest from a portion of their potential earnings from their defamation lawsuit victory against Jones.
“I think you’ve got to go out and try to get every dollar,” Lopez said on Tuesday. Curiously, none of his remarks that have been reported include any acknowledgement that the Sandy Hook families were involved in the sale.
Lopez was appointed to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first administration.
“More than two years after earning historic verdicts in Connecticut, we are disappointed the Bankruptcy Court rejected a purchase of Infowars that the court-appointed trustee recommended as being in the best interest of the creditors. These families, who have already persevered through countless delays and roadblocks, remain resilient and determined as ever to hold Alex Jones and his corrupt businesses accountable for the harm he has caused. This decision doesn’t change the fact that, soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes,” representatives of the Sandy Hook families said in a statement provided to TheWrap.
In a separate statement, The Onion said in part that it will “continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.”
On December 14, 2012, 26 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old, were murdered by a gunman at Sandy hook Elementary School in Connecticut. (The shooter then killed himself.) In the months and years after, Jones however became perhaps the most prominent proponent of many conspiracy theories and lies about attack, among them that it was a hoax designed to help outlaw guns and that the murdered children were actually still alive.
The families of those victims sued Jones for defamation, and in 2022, juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded them $1.487 billion in damages. Jones filed for bankruptcy two months later.
Representatives for Alex Jones didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but soon after the ruling, Jones went live on InfoWars to talk about it. Watch here if you must.
The post The Onion’s Bid to Buy Alex Jones’ Infowars Rejected by Federal Bankruptcy Judge appeared first on TheWrap.