A bankruptcy judge has rejected the sale of Alex Jones’ Infowars media empire to the satirical news outlet The Onion over concerns about the bidding process.
On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that the bankruptcy auction had not resulted in the best possible bids, but rejected Jones’ claim that the process had been plagued by “collusion.”
Lopez said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who ran the auction made “a good-faith error” by quickly asking for final offers, instead of encouraging more back-and-forth bidding between The Onion and competitor First American United Companies. The Onion emerged as the winner of the auction on November 14.
“This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” Lopez said, according to Reuters. “It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.”
The future of Infowars remains unclear following the ruling. Lopez said he did not want another auction and would let the trustee who oversaw the bidding decide the next steps.
Newsweek has contacted Jones for comment via email outside of regular working hours.
David J. Phillip/AP
Jones was forced to sell his assets in order to help pay the nearly $1.5 billion he owes the families of Sandy Hook victims after falsely claiming that the 2012 school shooting—which left 26 people dead, including 20 children—was a hoax and that the grieving parents were “crisis actors.”
Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook shooting did occur, but that the defamation lawsuits against him should have been dismissed for violating his right to free speech.
After the judge’s ruling on Tuesday, Jones said during a live broadcast of his Infowars show that he was not going to “run around and chortle about this, because this is just a battle, this is not the war.”
“I know that they’re just going to attack even harder because they’re desperate, and that’s okay. I’m a big boy. I asked to be in the arena,” he added. “I actually feel sorry for our enemies. It’s a guilty, low level thing of the flesh to celebrate stuff like this.”
Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in a statement: “We are deeply disappointed in today’s decision, but The Onion will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured.”
Los Angeles entertainment attorney Tre Lovell told Newsweek previously: “Jones has a right that his assets not be sold unreasonably as a fire sale or for an illegitimate purpose, but that the process allows the opportunity for bona fide and fair bidding.
“If The Onion’s intent is to make a joke of all this and purposefully seek to ruin the asset at the expense of Jones receiving a more fair and reasonable bid, this would be grounds to disallow the sale.”
The Onion offered $1.75 million in cash plus other incentives for Infowars’ assets at the auction.
The news outlet said the plan was to shut down Infowars and relaunch it in January as a satirical site parodying far-right conspiracy theorists, while also promoting gun violence prevention.
Meanwhile, First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones’ online store selling nutritional supplements, lost out at the auction despite offering a bid of $3.5 million, according to The Associated Press.
