The fight for Alex Jones' Infowars company heats up as Jones sues to hold on [View all]

Source: NPR

November 19, 2024 8:04 PM ET


Alex Jones is amping up the fight to stop The Onion from getting control of Infowars and its parent company, filing a lawsuit late Monday against the satirical news outlet. The Onion's bid for Free Speech Systems was named the winning bidder after last week's bankruptcy auction, with proceeds intended for Sandy Hook families who won a defamation suit against him. Jones owes the families $1.5 billion for spreading false conspiracies that the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., never happened; his followers then harassed and threatened them for years.

Jones' lawsuit asks a bankruptcy judge, who needs to sign off on the sale, to block it, calling The Onion's offer a "flagrantly non-compliant Frankenstein bid" and "the black letter definition of collusive bidding." He argues the judge should disqualify that offer, and instead name the only other bidder, First United American Companies, the winner. FUAC is affiliated with Jones and his online nutritional supplements store. FUAC bid $3.5 million in cash. The Onion offered half that amount — $1.75 million — in cash, plus a sweetener: The Connecticut families promised to forgo some of their sale proceeds to help beat the offer from FUAC.

The Onion attorneys say that deal would result in the highest payout to the other creditors, including a smaller group of families who won a separate defamation suit against Jones in Texas and did not offer to forgo any proceeds. Jones argues that offer is based on "fake dollars" and that the rules of the auction were improperly changed at the last minute to benefit The Onion and the Connecticut families and to deny FUAC a fair chance at winning. FUAC made its own move earlier Monday to block The Onion bid, saying in court papers that it was based on " 'Monopoly' money" and a "plan to rig the process."

U.S. bankruptcy trustee Christopher R. Murray, who is overseeing the bankruptcy auction, filed his own court papers dismissing "the barrage of baseless allegations" as just "a disappointed bidder's improper attempt to influence an otherwise fair and open auction process." Murray maintains that in "his reasonable business judgment and in consultation with his professionals," having a single round of "final and best" offers would be the best way "of maximizing value to the creditors," and that the judge's order authorizing the sale gives him the authorization "to determine which Qualified Bid is the highest or otherwise best offer."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/g-s1-34985/alex-jones-infowars-onion-auction-bankruptcy-sandy-hook