Company Associated With Alex Jones Challenges Onion’s Infowars Deal: ‘Secret Bid Scams’

A losing bidder linked to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones challenged the Onion’s purchase of Jones’s Infowars website on Monday, saying the humor site won a rigged bankruptcy auction and offered half as much cash as its bid.

First American United Companies, which is affiliated with Jones’ dietary supplement businesses, asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston to disqualify the offer from Onion, a parody news site, and name its $3.5 million offer as winner.

Jones was forced to auction off his assets, including Infowars, in bankruptcy after courts ordered him to pay $1.5 billion for defamation to the families of the 20 students and six staff members killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Elementary School. Hook in Newtown, Conn., by making false claims that the shootings were staged.

United States First Companies said in a court filing that a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee mishandled the auction by giving Onion credit for support from the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, whose lawsuits drove Jones into bankruptcy in 2022.

“Its effect is to reduce and lower the amount that Onion would have to offer in cash to ensure that it was the winning bid,” First American United Companies said in its opposition. “This wasn’t just a collusion, this was outright bid rigging.”

The Onion’s winning bid for Infowars included $1.75 million in cash, according to the objection.

Christopher Murray, the bankruptcy trustee charged with selling Jones’ assets, said in a court response Monday that First United American Companies’ objection was “an inappropriate attempt by the disappointed bidder to influence a fair and equitable auction process.” open”. Murray said his team would not be bullied into accepting an “inferior offer”.

The Onion’s offer was valued at $7 million, largely because most of the Sandy Hook families agreed to accept a percentage of future revenue from the new Infowars rather than receive an upfront payment from the sale, according to Murray.

The Onion did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for some of the Sandy Hook families declined to comment.

The Onion announced Thursday that it won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars’ assets and vowed to replace the website’s “relentless barrage of misinformation” with Onion’s “significantly less hateful disinformation.”

Lopez, who is overseeing the bankruptcy, said at a court hearing Thursday that he had concerns about the transparency of the auction. The judge said he will schedule a further hearing to gather more information and consider whether to approve the sale.

Infowars was briefly shut down after the sale was announced, but was back online within a day. The bankruptcy trustee in charge of selling Jones’ assets, Christopher Murray, said at Thursday’s hearing that he closed the business to make sure his assets weren’t damaged or taken before the property was transferred to Onion.

If the sale is approved, Onion will acquire Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and production equipment.

Connecticut-based families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting said they agreed to forgo some payments from defamation lawsuits to increase Onion’s bid and prevent other right-wing content creators from continuing to broadcast conspiracy theories on Infowars.

Jones claimed for years that the massacre was an organized hoax staged as part of a government plot to confiscate Americans’ guns. He has since admitted the shooting happened, but the families, who said Jones profited from years of his lies, sued him for defamation.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have ruled that Jones intentionally defamed the families. Lopez previously ruled that those judgments could not be legally discharged in bankruptcy, meaning Jones remains on the hook for most of the judgments even after Infowars is sold.