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<\/div>\nA US bankruptcy judge stopped parody news site the Onion from buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones\u2019s Infowars website, ruling that a bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.<\/p>\n
However, the judge, Christopher Lopez, on Tuesday rejected Jones\u2019s claims that the auction was plagued by \u201ccollusion\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lopez said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who ran the auction made \u201ca good-faith error\u201d by quickly asking for final offers for Infowars instead of encouraging more back-and-forth bidding by the Onion and auction competitor First American United Companies, affiliated with Jones\u2019s supplement-selling businesses, which was the runner-up.<\/p>\n \u201cThis should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cIt\u2019s clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n The Onion was named the winning bidder for Infowars<\/a> in a November auction. Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022 and was forced to liquidate his assets to pay $1.3bn in legal judgments to the families of 20 students and six staff members who were fatally shot in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.<\/p>\n Courts in Connecticut and Texas have ruled Jones defamed the families by making repeated false claims that the mass shooting was staged.<\/p>\n The Connecticut-based Sandy Hook families, who are Jones\u2019s largest creditors, augmented the Onion\u2019s bid by agreeing to forgo some repayment from the Infowars sale so that other creditors could receive more money.<\/p>\n Lopez said neither of the two offers for Infowars was enough money given the scope of Jones\u2019s debts, and told the trustee to work to resolve some of the disputes between the creditors before making a new attempt to sell Infowars.<\/p>\n Christopher Murray, a court-appointed trustee charged with selling Jones\u2019s assets, testified on Tuesday that the auction was fair, and that First American United Companies complained about the process only after learning that its bid was not chosen.<\/p>\n The Onion has said it plans to relaunch Infowars in 2025 as a parody site filled with \u201cnoticeably less hateful disinformation\u201d than before.<\/p>\n With Reuters<\/em><\/p>\n Court rejects far-right shock jock\u2019s claim of \u2018collusion\u2019 but finds that trustee should have got more money from parody site or Jones-affiliated bidder <\/p>\n A US bankruptcy judge stopped parody news site the Onion from buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones\u2019s Infowars website, ruling that a bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.<\/p>\n However, the judge, Christopher Lopez, on Tuesday rejected Jones\u2019s claims that the auction was plagued by \u201ccollusion\u201d.<\/p>\n