Infowars Bidder Moves to Disqualify The Onion’s Winning Offer

The losing bidder for right-wing provocateur Alex Jones’ Infowars media empire is seeking to disqualify The Onion’s winning bid, arguing that the satirical news site’s cash offer was less than its own.

Backup bidder First United American Cos. LLC, which operates the website for online supplement store ShopAlexJones.com, on Monday said its $3.5 million cash bid was larger than the $1.75 million offered by Onion parent Global Tetrahedron LLC.

The company, in an emergency motion to the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, accused the Onion of “collusion” with some families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims who backed the bid.

The disqualification motion comes after Judge Christopher M. Lopez last week expressed concerns about the transparency of the auction.

The sale process is being overseen by trustee Christopher Murray, who is tasked with liquidating Jones’ estate in bankruptcy to help him pay down approximately $1.5 billion in defamation judgments related to false statements he made calling the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting a hoax.

As part of the winning bid, some of the Sandy Hook families agreed to waive part of their unsecured claims against Jones, which helped The Onion secure the top spot as the best-value offer, Murray said last week.

Murray called the auction process “fair and open” in a brief response Monday.

“Having failed in its prior efforts to bully the Trustee and his advisors into accepting its inferior bid, FUAC now alleges, without evidence, collusion and bad faith in an attempt to mislead the Court and disqualify its only competition in the auction,” the trustee said.

First United said Monday that the Sandy Hook families shouldn’t be allowed to waive their claims to boost the offer.

First United said the families’ waiver is the equivalent of “monopoly” money because there’s no way to value their claim, saying it “provides zero value to the bankruptcy estate.” Additional cash won’t go to the estate under The Onion’s bid and therefore it has no value, it said.

The case is Jones, Bankr. S.D. Tex., No. 22-33553, emergency motion 11/18/24.