A federal judge on Tuesday scrapped the sale of Alex Jones' Infowars to the satirical news website The Onion, ruling that the auction process failed to adequately compensate the family of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims—to whom Jones has been ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages for promoting conspiracy theories about the incident.
Alex Jones speaks outside the federal courthouse after a bankruptcy hearing in Houston.
After a two-day hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez criticized the auction process and said the sale to The Onion “left a lot of money on the table” for the Sandy Hook families and added, “You got to scratch and claw and get everything you can for them,” the Associated Press reported.
Although he cited issues with the auction, the judge rejected Jones’ claims that the process involved illegal collusion and instead said the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the Infowars sale made a “good-faith error.”
The judge also noted that the bids made by the two participants in the bankruptcy auction—the Onion’s $1.75 million and the Jones-linked First United American Companies' $3.5 million—were large enough considering the amount Jones’ owes.
Lopez did not order a fresh auction and left it up to the trustee to resolve the matter and bring in more money for the creditors—although it is unclear if the Onion will be allowed to make a follow-up bid.
This is a developing story.