US judge stops The Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ Infowars
The Onion was named the winning bidder in November, but a judge said a flawed auction resulted in low bids
A US bankruptcy judge on Tuesday stopped the parody news site the Onion from buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars website, ruling that a bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.
US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez rejected Jones’ claims that the auction was plagued by “collusion”, at the end of a two-day hearing in Houston.
But he said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who ran the auction made “a good-faith error” by quickly asking for final offers for Infowars instead of encouraging more back-and-forth bidding between the Onion and a company affiliated with Jones’ supplement-selling businesses, which was the runner-up.
“This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,” Lopez said. “It’s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.”
Lopez said neither of the two offers for Infowars were enough money given the scope of Jones’ debts, and told the trustee to work to resolve some of the disputes between the creditors before making a new attempt to sell Infowars.