‘No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction,’ says US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez over Infowars’ purported sale to Onion.
A US judge overseeing Alex Jones’ bankruptcy expressed skepticism over Thursday’s purported sale of Jones’ website Infowars to satire publication The Onion, according to the Associated Press.
While reports claimed Infowars was sold at auction to The Onion, US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez at an emergency hearing Thursday said he was concerned over how the auction was conducted, considering one of the parties bid $3.5 million while a court-appointed trustee admitted The Onion’s was not the highest bid.
Via the AP:
…[T]he judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case said Thursday that he had concerns about how the auction was conducted and ordered a hearing for next week after complaints by lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a $3.5 million bid.
[…]
At a court hearing Thursday afternoon in Houston, the trustee who oversaw the auction, Christopher Murray, acknowledged that The Onion did not have the highest bid but said it was a better deal overall because some of the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to pay Jones’ other creditors.
A lawyer for First United American Companies, which submitted the only other bid, argued the rules of the auction changed at the last minute, as Jones has repeatedly claimed.
Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said.
While the court-appointed trustee claims he followed the rules laid out by the judge in September, Judge Lopez expressed concerns over the sealed bid auction’s lack of transparency.
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” Judge Lopez said at the emergency hearing Thursday, adding, “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
Jones sounded the alarm on the emergency hearing’s developments during a marathon broadcast on X Thursday, arguing the sale has not been finalized or approved by the judge despite mainstream outlets’ reporting: