A judge late Tuesday night said he would not approve the sale of Infowars, the website founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to the Chicago-based satirical publication The Onion, prolonging a messy tug of war between two high-profile suitors.
The ruling, by Judge Christopher Lopez in federal bankruptcy court in Houston, puts The Onion’s plan to take possession of the Infowars site and its associated assets in limbo. The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones.
A spokesman for The Onion did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Mr. Jones did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Though the case involved colorful litigants dueling for a controversial prize, it ultimately hinged on austere matters of protocol. The arguments over two days of court hearings boiled down to whether the court-appointed trustee adhered to the law when he solicited bids and ultimately picked Global Tetrahedron, The Onion’s parent company, as the winner.
The total value of The Onion’s bid was $7 million, including $1.75 million in cash put up by Global Tetrahedron, with the rest coming from the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, who essentially opted to put a portion of their potential earnings from a defamation judgment against Mr. Jones toward The Onion’s bid.
The hearing began Monday with opening arguments from lawyers representing Global Tetrahedron, and First United American Companies, a bidder affiliated with Mr. Jones. Much of the back-and-forth was focused on whether the court should allow families of the Sandy Hook victims to apply a portion of their judgment against Mr. Jones to The Onion’s bid.
Not including the backing of the Sandy Hook families, First United American Companies had a higher bid, offering $3.5 million in cash. But Jeff Tanenbaum, an expert who advised the court-appointee trustee on the sale, said that the combined bid with the Sandy Hook families was superior.
Another point was whether Christopher Murray, the trustee overseeing the sale of Infowars, should have allowed suitors to submit their bids privately rather than in an open auction. A lawyer for the bidder affiliated with Mr. Jones argued the sealed bidding was improper; lawyers for the trustee and Global Tetrahedron argued it was acceptable.
As the drama played out in court, Mr. Jones hosted on X what he billed as the “final Infowars broadcast ever,” inaccurately telling viewers that the company was being sold to the billionaire Michael Bloomberg. He criticized the bankruptcy trustee’s process as an “Alice in Wonderland-level bizarroland.”
Before the hearing, Mr. Jones argued in a filing that the Sandy Hook families and Global Tetrahedron improperly colluded on their bid, making “a mockery of a fair and transparent auction and bidding process.” Mr. Jones’s filing, which ran for 29 pages, was a hodgepodge that traced alleged connections between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Sandy Hook families.
Although the hearing started off in decorous fashion, it got increasingly heated. At one point, a lawyer for the bidder associated with Mr. Jones questioned how the Sandy Hook families could afford “all these lawyers,” a remark that drew immediate objections.
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