In a victory for Alex Jones, a bankruptcy judge rules that “the process fell down.”

After a grueling hearing that stretched over two days, a federal bankruptcy judge declined to approve the sale of Infowars to Global Tetrahedron, LLC, the Onion’s parent company late on Tuesday.

Last month, Infowars was sold at bankruptcy auction to the company; Onion CEO Ben Collins said they planned to relaunch the conspiracist site as a parody of itself. Instead, the ruling by Christopher Lopez, a bankruptcy judge in Texas’ Southern District, means the auction will be overturned and no new auction will be held. The judge ordered the US trustee who oversaw the bankruptcy process and auction to report back to the court in 30 days with a new plan to bring the case to a close.

Despite a good faith effort by the trustee to maximize profits for the Sandy Hook families, who are Jones’ biggest creditors, in making his ruling Lopez held that “the process fell down.”

  • naeap@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    17·
    15 days ago

    Maybe I’m just stupid, but can anyone explain to me why this was overturned?

    Wasn’t that a legal auction and they won said auction?

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      211·
      15 days ago

      From what I could tell from previous articles, it seems to be that the judge is saying that the agreement made between The Onion and the Sandy Hook families is invalid because they were counting forgiven debts as part of the “sale.” It seemed legal and up and up, but the judge is on the side of Jones. I think, but don’t quote me, that Musk was a part of the losing party at auction. The losing party was trying to make it so Alex could come back.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        15 days ago

        …the judge is on the side of Jones.

        I believe there are two different things being mixed up here.

        • Jones was asking for the sale to be deemed illegal due to collusion between The Onion and the Sandy Hook parents. The judge dismissed that argument.
        • The judge stated that the trustee made a mistake in calling the auction done before allowing for another round of counter offers. He stated that the amount raised by the sale was not high enough and that too much “money was left on the table”. If anything, this will put more money in the pockets of the Sandy Hook parents.
        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
          1·
          14 days ago

          Again, it’s not about the money for the families. They want Alex shut down. Money doesn’t bring back the time to grieve from the horror of what happened to their kids, but making sure he doesn’t do this to any other families can help them sleep at night.