“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” the judge, Christopher Lopez, said in an emergency hearing on Thursday afternoon. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
Oh bullshit.
Are there laws in the US or courts just act based on how they feel?
The claim I’m hearing is that the rules of the auction were changed at the last minute; it went from a regular auction to an anonymous “sealed bid” auction, where bids had to be placed the week prior. The sealed bids were put before the judge, and there were higher bids than Onion (a laughable $200K), but the people running the auction choose The Onion as the winning bid, anyway. The higher bids were by conservative groups, to buy InfoWars & keep it running. The Onion was chosen to assume ownership for purposes of humiliation & brand destruction, even though they only bid $200K.
This court case is a reaction to people running an auction based on how they feel, allegedly. Liquidation auction efforts, logically, should pursue the option that pays out the most money.
Liquidation auction efforts, logically, should pursue the option that pays out the most money.
To whom?
The money is going to Jones’s victims. The victims seem fine getting less money if it means InfoWars goes to someone who will destroy the brand rather than some conservatives who will pump money into it to further destroy their lives.
Typical American “justice”. Only first world country where the death penalty is in vigor because “this is what the victims would want”, but when a plaintiff looks like they might actually get a small moral win against fascists suddenly the Law is a dispassionate machine.
To whom?
All the creditors, as an entire body.
The victims seem fine getting less money
To be clear, it’s only some of the victims that have said they’re fine with less money. The trustee has a responsibility to make sure that the creditor body as a whole gets the most money. If some subset of creditors (the families willing to reduce their claims if the Onion buys the assets) are willing to reduce their claims as part of the bid, great, they should add that money to the pile and consider it as part of the bid.
But the families that do agree to take less money can’t force the other families to take less money. It has to be voluntary for everyone.
And it sounds like the Jones-affiliated bidder is complaining about the auction procedures. If they followed the already-approved procedures perfectly, there’s not much to talk about there. But if they changed the procedures at the last minute, or if the actual auction followed procedures that weren’t described in the approved procedures (such as accepting creditors’ reduction of their claims as part of the bid, or not allowing “topping bids” after the sealed bids were submitted), then it’s normal to hold a hearing to make a decision on whether the auction followed the right procedures.
Where exactly are you hearing all this? Sources please.
But the trustee who oversaw the auction said he followed the judge’s rules laid out in a September order, which made the overbidding round optional.
The exact bid amount offered by the Onion for InfoWars remains unknown, but it has been reported it was lower than First United American’s bid of $3.5m. The Onion’s offer was seen as a better deal because some of the related Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to help pay off Jones’s other creditors.
It was reported on Thursday that the Onion’s purchase of InfoWars received support from families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, to whom Jones owes $1.4bn in defamation judgments after he falsely claimed the 2012 school massacre was a hoax.
I knew it was too good to be true.
Is this not the capitalist dystopia they wanted? It was an auction, The Onion was the highest bidder, and the discussion should stop there, right?
“The Onion was the highest bidder[…]”
Literally the point of the suit is that The Onion was not the highest bidder. From the article:
The exact bid amount offered by the Onion for InfoWars remains unknown, but it has been reported it was lower than First United American’s bid of $3.5m.
The victims of Jones decided it was better to get less money and not allow the brand to go to one of his allies to continue the usual operations. They are saying that even though they effectively own the brand, that they don’t have the right to choose who it’s sold to.
There is only one way this should go, but…
But you see, the judge agrees politically with the former content of Info Wars. You should learn to be more sensitive of the feelings of egoist judges! Their job is soooo hard being he backbone of American democracy.
The Onions winning bid was lower than the other bid.
The other bid wouldn’t be an arm’s-length transaction because that entity does business with Alex Jones
Not after 8 families opted to take a smaller cut of the sale.
So what?
Auctions are contracts, most of them are beholden to the highest bidder. I am guessing thr lawyers are either being paid to make media waves, or they didn’t read the terms of the auction.
The auction house specified that they will not necessarily accept only the highest bid
So that’s why the judge is taking a closer look at it.
The trustee and auction house are allowed to accept lower bids. Especially ones that make the creditors more whole, which this one does. So no that’s not why
Ok. Well, feel free to tell everyone why since you seem to know so much.
Jones is raising a stink because he feels like the bidding process was cut short and the rules were changed once his bid was the clear winner. He’s a moron and he’s wrong and he’s also not allowed to bid, so his bid by proxy will hopefully be caught and punished
Im glad you were there. But you should have told the New York Times, the AP, and the Guardian instead of us.
Sellers have a right to accept lower bids, or to accept non-monetary “value” and it happens literally every day in real estate.
What I don’t know is whether the nature of the auction actually changes things.
“No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
What did he mean by that?
The way I read it: The judge sees InfoWars as a beacon of hope and truth, and Onion as an anarchist, absurdist fake news site. To him it is like giving away the Federal Reserve to Friedrich Engels as a gift. It just feels wrong. Endlessly funny.
How do feelings even enter into this? They judge is nuts
There are going to be a ton of people getting upset now that their source of fake boner pills is getting disrupted.
If there is anything that could trigger a bloody uprising and revolution, it’s that.
How about you review my fuckin’ nuts, your honor.
Guardian’s slow on the news. This was known yesterday.
There were only two bidders, the Onion and a backup bidder. The judge is looking into how the bidding process was run, because the Onion won with a lower bid than the back up bidder.
The Onion’s offer was seen as a better deal because some of the related Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to help pay off Jones’s other creditors.
Both article explains that. They used a “credit” given by the Sandy Hooks survivors so that their money from this sale would go to Alex’s other debts first. So it was less money but allocated more beneficially for jones.
That is interesting.
I’m comfortable with The Onion owning infowars.
The quality and integrity of the journalism will only improve.
The dishonorable judge Griftopher Lopez
He seems to be pretty uncomfortable with the results of this auction himself.
