Judge blocks The Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ Infowars

A bankruptcy judge has blocked The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones’ Infowars conspiracy platform, citing concerns with the auction process which he says left money on the table.

A bankruptcy judge has blocked The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones’ Infowars conspiracy platform, citing concerns with the auction process which he says left money on the table. “I’m going to not approve the sale to the purchaser. I think there’s a great lack of clarity here,” Judge Christopher Lopez, a bankruptcy judge for the Southern District of Texas, said during the ruling on Tuesday. Lopez said the process “while well intended, simply did not maximize value in any way based upon the record before me.” Last month, a court-appointed trustee said the satirical news site won the auction to acquire Infowars’ parent company Free Speech Systems, which was sold off as part of a defamation settlement after Jones falsely called the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre a hoax. The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of eight victims of the school shooting and one first responder. According to court documents, The Onion, via its parent company Global Tetrahedron, offered $1.75 million in cash along with a “credit” from the Connecticut families, who offered to forgo 100% of their portion of the winning bid to support the effort, valuing the bid at $7 million. The one other competing bid, at $3.5 million in cash, came from First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones and operates his lucrative online nutritional supplements store.