Judge Decides The Onion’s Purchase of Infowars was Not Legit

Previously: Judge to Decide If The Onion Can Buy Infowars Following Shady Auction Supported by Sandy Hoaxsters

Hey – Alex made it out alive!

Apparently, this will mean the company owned by his people can buy Infowars and he can continue to operate it.

Although, the reality is, these legal attacks are never going to stop. You never get to a point where this is over.

Reuters:

A U.S. 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.

U.S. 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.

So, the bankruptcy trustee didn’t know how to run an auction?

That seems like quite a stretch, but okay.

“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.

The Onion was named the winning bidder for Infowars in a November auction, but Jones and First American United Companies, the Jones-affiliated company, had argued the sale process was tainted because the Onion received too much credit for having the support of families that won large court verdicts against Jones.

This isn’t really over.

There is still an opportunity for some other party to come in and outbid Jones. But then it’s possible that Elon Musk will come back into this situation and outbid the out-bidder.

Though I’ve said from the beginning of this drama that Infowars.com doesn’t really matter that much, given the situation. The site gets a fair amount of traffic and allows Jones to sell his various snake oils, but Elon has allowed him free reign on Twitter, where he broadcasts his show, and that is where most of the traffic is.

The real issue is the court trying to make Jones give up his Twitter account. Without either Infowars or Twitter, he would be completely silenced.

It’s so cartoonish that the civil court system now functions as a “legal” method to bypass the First Amendment and shut down freedom of speech. But it does function that way and has for several years. Trust me.