A company linked to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has doubled its offer to over $7 million to buy his Infowars platforms after it lost a bankruptcy auction to The Onion satirical news operation.
The sale to the Onion, which was supported by by Sandy Hook families defamed by Jones, was later voided by a judge. Jones falsely reported on Inforwars that the shooting was a hoax to boost gun control, and that the dead children and devastated families following a 2020 mass killing at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut were actors.
The gunman killed 20 children, ages 6 and 7, and six school staff members.
Jones declared bankrupty in 2022 after he was ordered t pay $1.5 billion in defamation damages to relatives of the Sandy Hook victims in Connecticut and Texas.
First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name that sells nutritional supplements, submitted the new offer even though there was no request to do so, Joshua Wolfshohl, an attorney for the trustee overseeing Jones’ bankruptcy, told a bankruptcy court judge at a hearing in Houston.
Wolfshohl said the trustee is also expecting a new offer soon from The Onion’s parent company, Chicago-based Global Tetrahedron.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez voided the original auction and rejected the sale of Infowars to The Onion in December, saying the bidding process was flawed, not transparent and didn’t raise enough money for creditors. He also said there was too much confusion about The Onion’s bid and its actual value. The Onion and First United American were the only two bidders.
Most of the proceeds from the sale of Infowars, as well as from many of Jones’ personal assets that are being sold, will go to the Sandy Hook families to help satisfy the defamation judgments. Some of the proceeds will go to Jones’ other creditors.
The future of Infowars, based in Jones’ hometown of Austin, Texas, remains up in the air after the failed auction, and it’s still not clear how the sale of its assets will proceed. Wolfshohl said the trustee, Christopher Murray, will evaluate the new offers and decide what to do next.
“I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like,” Wolfshohl said. “But I think we would come back to the court and say, ‘Judge, here’s what we’ve got. Let’s talk about a sale process, one that your honor’s comfortable with, possibly with an auction.’”
Representatives of The Onion and First American United did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment.
The Onion had submitted a $1.75 million cash offer with plans to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January as a parody. The bid also included a deal with many of the Sandy Hook families for them to forgo $750,000 of their auction proceeds and give it to other creditors.
First United American initially bid $3.5 million in cash and was expected to let Jones stay at Infowars. Despite the lower cash offer by The Onion, the trustee chose it as the auction winner, saying its offer would result in more money for creditors.
Jones and First United American had claimed fraud and collusion in the bidding process, but Lopez said there was no wrongdoing.
Since the auction, the Sandy Hook families who won more than $1.4 billion in the Connecticut lawsuit and those awarded about $50 million in the Texas lawsuit have reached a deal on how to split the proceeds from the sales of Jones and Infowars’ assets. The two sides had been at odds over the issue for months.
Under the agreement, the families in Texas suit would get at least $4 million and the Connecticut lawsuit families would get at least $12 million. If the Connecticut suit families get more than $12 million, the families in the Texas lawsuit would get 25 percent of that extra amount. The deal needs to be approved by Judge Lopez.
