The Onion is still committed to buying Infowars after their recent setback in court


Last month, it was reported that satirical news website The Onion had won a bidding war to buy Alex Jones’ evil right-wing media company, including his Infowars website. They’d even worked together with the families of the Sandy Hook victims to ensure that they had enough money. The results were promptly challenged by First United American Companies (FUAC), an LLC associated with Jones’ other business dealings. FUAC claimed that they had made a bid that was “twice as much cash” as The Onion’s bid.

Both parties appeared in court this week for a two-day hearing in which they presented their cases. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who was appointed to serve the Southern District of Texas in 2019, ruled that the process was “unfair” because FUAC wasn’t given the final chance to outbid The Onion. As a result, he would not approve the sale and instead, sent it back down to the trustee to decide what to do next.

A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by The Onion’s parent company to buy Alex Jones’ far-right media empire, including the website Infowars, ruling that the auction process was unfair.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said after a two-day hearing that The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, had not submitted the best bid and was wrongly named the winner of an auction last month by a court-appointed trustee.

“I don’t think it’s enough money,” Lopez said in a late-night ruling from the bench in a Houston court. “I’m going to not approve the sale.”

It was not immediately clear whether there would be a new auction in which The Onion could bid again for Jones’ assets. Lopez said he would leave the decision about what to do next in the hands of the trustee, Christopher Murray, who had overseen the auction.

The judge said Murray had acted in good faith in running the auction in which The Onion’s parent company initially appeared to prevail, but he said the trustee did not run a transparent process and should have given a rival bidder associated with Jones another chance to improve its bid.

“I think you’ve got to go out and try to get every dollar,” Lopez said. “I think that the process fell down.”

The ruling dashed, at least for now, Global Tetrahedron’s plans to take over Infowars and radically shift its content from anti-government conspiracy theories to satirical humor. Instead, Jones can continue operating his far-right media business as he has for decades.

Jones went live from a studio soon after the ruling and told viewers: “We can celebrate the judge doing the right thing.” He had previously referred to the sale process as “auction fraud” and a “fraudulent sale.”

Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a statement on X that the company was “deeply disappointed” but would “continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.”

“It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case,” he said.

“We appreciate that the court repeatedly recognized The Onion acted in good faith, but are disappointed that everyone was sent back to the drawing board with no winner, and no clear path forward for any bidder,” Collins continued. Collins previously covered disinformation and conspiracy theories for NBC News, a beat that often meant covering Jones.

The Onion’s parent company had partnered in its bid with families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting who successfully sued Jones for defamation, winning court judgments now valued at $1.2 billion. Part of the company’s plan for Infowars was to make anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety the exclusive advertiser.

Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Connecticut families, said they were also disappointed.

“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,” he said in a statement.

“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,” Mattei said.

Last month’s announcement that Global Tetrahedron had been named the winner of the auction shocked the media world and fans of both Jones and The Onion, but that announcement was only a recommendation from the trustee and required approval from Lopez, who is overseeing Jones’ bankruptcy case.

[From NBC News]

Well, this sucks for so many reasons. It sucks because we can’t have nice things. It sucks because the company that challenged The Onion is affiliated with Jones and they clearly have unlimited dark money. But most of all, it sucks because Jones is gloating to have gotten the ruling that he wanted. This feels like The Empire Strikes Back and it’s so frustrating! I don’t know what kind of funds The Onion and its parent company have to compete with whatever Jones’ business partners have, but I truly hope that they can pull it off. Is it legal for them to crowdfund it? I would totally contribute some money to that cause.

A statement from The Onion about InfoWars.

[image or embed]

— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 12:14 AM

Embed from Getty Images

Photos are via YouTube/Law & Crime Channel

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9 Responses to “The Onion is still committed to buying Infowars after their recent setback in court”

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  1. ML says:

    Disappointing, and hopefully they will prevail. Our justice system is not impartial, and that stinks.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/DZaxWUZvywk?si=bD1VpMu2R8o2Zv2I
    This is a funny video courtesy the Onion. Enjoy!

  2. NoHope says:

    I used to love The Onion for its biting and unsparing left-leaning humor. To the point where I paid to subscribe to the print edition to support them.

    But I started noticing that The Onion has gotten bland, almost studious it its efforts to avoid lampooning conservatives, which it used to do to laugh-out-loud perfection. The stories are meh and not even groan worthy dad humor.

    I’m not interested. I have limited bandwidth and I’m not spending time or money on something that is trying to be centrist to gain reader share. Great strategy, I suppose?

    But sometimes in trying to appeal to everyone you end up being important to no one.

  3. Drea says:

    What I don’t entirely understand is why the judge said the purchase price was too low? Like what business is that of his? I get that the process needs to be transparent (as contracted), but it’s just strange to me that the judge is commenting on things that seem more subjective than substantive.

    • Drea says:

      I understand valuation, of course. It’s just likely as bloated as AJ. Talking about valuation is one thing, but to say “I don’t think it’s enough money” is weird and shows bias.

    • NatW says:

      I’m a bankruptcy lawyer in Texas and I regularly practice in the Southern District, although I am not involved in this case. I’ve known most of the players in this case for about 15 years and I’ve had cases with them, sometimes aligned and sometimes opposed.

      TL;DR: this all makes sense from a bankruptcy law perspective and is fascinating for the bankruptcy nerds.

      The Trustee has a fiduciary duty to maximize the value of the estate for creditors, and the Bankruptcy Code requires the Bankruptcy Judge to make a factual finding that the proposed sale is in the best interest of the creditors. The Trustee has a lot of discretion on how to sell assets – they can do a brokered sale, a closed auction, or an open auction, or even a combo of those things (selling different assets in different ways). A closed auction is a common choice when you’re dealing with a larger pool of sophisticated bidders but their offers may be more complex or have differences that need to be evaluated. For example, if they’re going to do debt to equity conversions, or they’re likely to bid on different pools of assets. Those are very different from just straight cash bids and the Trustee has to take time to really evaluate them and figure out how much money will be available to distribute to creditors, what are the risks of not getting paid, what is the time value of money being paid out over time, etc. Things like promises to retain employees can also make a bid “better” even if it is less money. So Chris Murray’s explanation of why he switched the bid procedures make sense to me. An open auction is common when the pool of assets is very discrete, all the bidders agree to the same form of the sale contract, and the only difference in the sale will be the name of the purchaser and the sale price.

      In this case, with 2 highly motivated bidders, an open auction does have a significant chance of increasing the sale price. So Judge Lopez’s determination that the closed auction left money on the table also makes sense to me. Judge Lopez is really smart and he isn’t the kind of judge who will fudge on the law because the result feels good. He cares deeply about getting to the right result but in the right way.

      The Onion & their funding group definitely still have the chance to purchase these assets. Crowd funding wouldn’t be prohibited per se, but it would require disclosure and it might be difficult for them to make some of the required disclosures about the identity of the purchasers.

      I’m really interested to see what the Trustee proposes for the further attempt to sell the assets because I just don’t see how an open auction works when you have 1 purchaser with a cash + payout over time offer, but cease operating (at least in its current form) and 1 purchaser with a cash offer, plus a promise to continue operations and re-employ the key employee. The Trustee and the Court aren’t comparing apples to apples and doing that in an open auction setting doesn’t really make sense to me. But Chris is a smart guy and his lawyers are very good, so I’m sure they will come up with something creative.

      • Drea says:

        Thanks for explaining this to me! This makes sense.

        I think it was just the wording in the column that threw me – “I don’t think it’s enough money”, vs something like “The trustee didn’t meet the requirements of his fiduciary duty”, ya know?

        Obviously NAL. Thanks again.

      • Rosie says:

        Thank you so much for this explanation! I really appreciate it.

    • NatW says:

      @Drea – I think the media probably pulled the most understandable clip from a lengthy ruling because most people wouldn’t understand a more legalistic quote. When judges are ruling from the bench, they tend to be a little more informal than in written opinions, so my best guess is that there was some longer, more formal finding that the trustee didn’t show that this was the highest and best offer or in the best interest of the creditors and the quoted comment was tacked on as emphasis or color commentary, or maybe this was part of a summary of the ruling. In a sale hearing like this, the Judge will literally go through the list of requirements under the bankruptcy code and find that they were met or not, but that is very dry and boring for non-bankruptcy lawyers and wouldn’t make good copy. The hearing also went until 11:30 PM, so Judge Lopez might just have been a little tired!

  4. Cleo cat says:

    I think the judge made a sound decision based on legal precedent. I’m still quite sad. I’m convinced Felon Suck is going to swoop in and buy it. It’s just a bauble for him. And I spelled his name wrong because you know that @sshole Google searches himself every night.