The Onion's bid to purchase Alex Jones' Infowars experienced a big setback late Tuesday. A bankruptcy judge rejected the bid from the satirical news website's parent company, Global Tetrahedron, ruling that the company had actually not submitted the highest bid for the far-right radio host's conspiracy-theory-heavy website, and had thus been wrongly declared the winning bidder of the auction for the site. A court-appointed trustee oversaw the auction, held as part of bankruptcy proceedings for Jones, who owes $1.2 billion in court judgements to Sandy Hook families who sued him for defamation over his claims that the 2012 elementary school shooting was a hoax. The judge said it will be up to that trustee whether to hold the auction again, NBC News reports. He has 30 days to decide how to move forward, NPR reports.
"I don't think it's enough money. I'm going to not approve the sale," the judge said. "I think you've got to go out and try to get every dollar. I think that the process fell down." He said the auction was unfair because the rival bidder (an entity associated with Jones) was not given a chance to respond to the Onion's bid, which included $1.75 million in cash, plus a non-cash pledge from some Sandy Hook families to give up the proceeds they otherwise would have received from the sale, in an attempt to bolster the satire site's bid. Jones celebrated the judge's ruling, while the Onion CEO and a lawyer for Sandy Hook families lamented the outcome. "This decision doesn't change the fact that, soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes," the attorney said. (More Infowars stories.)
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