There's way too much nasty dross in this thread. No, the topic does not make that ok. As you'll see when you review the guidelines, "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
This is probably the correct decision. Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash, and in the case of a bankruptcy, cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt." Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.
Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior? Just in order to get cash to compensate them at pennies on the dollar for his previous round of nasty behavior?
I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether.
Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan...
But because the largest creditor has a claim that is so much larger, the minority creditors will actually get less cash with the vitamin company offer.
The deal was structured so that the minority creditors would get more cash than from any other offer.
The only creditor that would get less cash from this offer is the sandy hook families and they are fine with that.
How is it the correct decision that Alex Jones has a judgment against him for more money than he claims to have, but also Alex Jones has enough money to enter a bid to satisfy the judgement? It’s a farce.
>The other creditors are far better off getting more cash
The other creditors get more cash from The Onion's offer. It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer remuneration to minority creditors.
> Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash
Wait, isn't Alex Jone's essentially bankrupted by the ruling for the Sandy Hook parents? If he has that much cash to offer wouldn't that have been given to the parents who won the suit?
It is 100% not. It makes fewer creditors whole. Simple as that. It's worse for all creditors involved, as per the creditors. Any suggestion that this is "correct" or better is out of ignorance or deceit.
> The other creditors are far better off getting more cash
The nature of the original deal guaranteed the other creditors got more money than they would from the other offer by $100,000 more. Suggesting that they were getting less is ignorant.
> the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
Nothing in the order says the accounting of the bid value was wrong it was mostly the form of the auction taking place as a single sealed bid round that the judge seems to quibble with. Counting debt as part of the bid is also not that unusual or weird, banks will bid their outstanding debt on foreclosure auctions all the time to get control of the house and sell it normally.
> cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt."
Not true. The entire point of bankruptcy proceedings is to resolve debt to the creditors.
And in fact, that wasn't the issue that the Judge took here. The judge didn't like the amount, not the creditors bid.
> The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.
The other creditors signed off on the deal which is why the Trustee took the bid. Alex Jones would have $3.5 million dollars less debt than if he took the FAUC bid. Which is exactly what the Trustee should prioritize, cutting back on Jone's debt.
I read the details of the auction out of interest. I think it is valid, and in the best interests of the creditors as it currently stands. Interested to see how others have read into it that they offered "more". It was a blind auction and the result is clearly in the best interests of the creditors to take the onion deal.
>Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash
Yes, but shouldn't that already be due to the victims?
This is worse for the victims, because rather than getting that money, and future revenue, they just get that money.
And this all ignores the harm to the victims, of giving Jones control of Infowars again.
They aren't ever going to see all of this $1.5B. I doubt most even want all that money, what they probably want is for Jones not to be able to keep his mouth piece.
No, Legal Eagle covered the sale, and the agreement giving it to the Onion maximized the proceeds to both of the Sandy Hook groups that have won judgement against Alex Jones. With the sale to Alex Jones's set of straw buyers, that wasn't true.
Will hold judgement until I read the judge’s opinion, but this bit:
“‘It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,’ Judge Lopez said.”
is nonsense from an auction theoretical perspective.
First-price sealed-bid auctions are a vetted auction system [1]—almost all real estate and corporate mergers, for example, are sold like this, as are government tenders [2].
(They’re not as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but nobody actually does that.)
The bankruptcy estate is selling the asset. Not Alex Jones. The creditors should be deciding who buys their stuff. Not a judge. (The judge is there to coördinate the creditors, not substitute his judgement for theirs.)
Are there practically any other creditors? I would think the creditor owed $1.5B would cause all other creditors to become irrelevant rounding errors as a fraction of a percent. So if the families were to bid $X, then they'd be paying it right back into their other pocket. Seems like just a technicality or theatrics to require them to temporarily come up with cash just to give it right back to themselves. But lawyers love arguing technicalities.
> Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.
The whole purpose of the deal was to give everyone, except the largest creditor, more cash. Sure the other deal offered 2x more cash, but the largest creditor is so disproportionately large compared to all the other creditors, they would have basically taken all the cash and left little to nothing for the other creditors. The rejected deal involved the largest creditor voluntarily giving up part of their claim, resulting in a much larger (I.e. something like 10x larger) payout for other creditors, despite the lower dollar value on the entire deal.
So yeah, the other creditors are far better off getting more cash. But to do that InfoWars would need to sell for many multiples more than highest bid seen so far.
So Alex Jones gets to cheat his way out of consequences yet again by transferring his assets to a new company and shopping for a sympathetic judge, just like the last several times?
> Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
You have been lied to.
As I see it, the situation couldn't be any simpler: the oligarchs will take what they want, justice be damned. It was a done deal as soon as Musk entered the scene.
There's a deep irony in your post that you say it's the correct decision when it's Alex Jones attempting to strongarm his Infowars rights back after losing them in court because he failed to pay his outstanding debts.
Like you do see the obvious corruption here, right?
Am I missing something or does this NYT article not actually say what the judge based his decision on? That would be an important piece of information to have when deciding whether the decision was good or not.
This is the legal pretext, which appears about 2/3 of the way through the article:
> Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.
From the article: "Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added."
NYT reporting has been trash for at least 10 years. Anyway Matt Levine, who has as good an opinion on this kind of thing as any columnist, sees it as mostly a technicality, and believes Onion can just submit their bid again. Of course, Elon also now has an outside interest, and can outbid anyone via proxy or otherwise.
I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this. This being the internet, though:
If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want.
A bankruptcy trustee was involved during the whole process (3rd party neutral). While the goal of increasing money to creditors here may work due to the free publicity, it harms the creditors interests who already agreed to the settlement. So you have a third party neutral trustee and the creditors who were harmed agreeing.
With that said bankruptcy judges do reject plans quite often and this is a high profile case.
For an entire week, I thought this was an Onion parody headline, and didn't realize the Onion _actually_ tried to buy Info Wars.
We're living in such an entertaining era.
Life imitates art.
Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not being hyperbolic saying people would be less mad at him if he had done the shooting himself.
And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?
I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down.
A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments.
I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't fine somebody the value of an entire town unless he's done destruction of that order, or at least a fraction of that order.
It is clear that Jones and his relatives have moved money and assets around in order to shield them from the verdict. Now, money that should have been already given to the victims is being used to steal back the megaphone that caused harmed in the first place. The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences. There are no words for the evil going on here. What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?
Now that it's public knowledge how low the bids were, a re-auction might attract many more bidders and raise a LOT more money for the creditors. It is certainly not an asset with any appeal to me, but a talented brand and e-commerce operator can likely generate a river of cash flow from the IP/audience for sale here.
This is kind of bullshit. The Sandy Hook families were a part of The Onion’s bid. They were clearly ok with it.
The court knows it can’t sell it back to Jones or a proxy of, but this decision also allows Jones to continue as if he hadn’t sold. And I think that’s what they’re aiming for
Wait, so you can be fined 1.5 Billion for reporting on a conspiracy theory?
BTW, this is a lot more than pharmaceutical companies pay out for actually killing people.
I remember watching the trial and it was the most ridiculous thing every. The defendant (Alex) wasn't allowed to say he's innocent because the judge defaulted him. Yet the prosecution was allowed to bring in all kinds of evidence of his guilt (other than him being defaulted) and present that to the jury.
So in essence, you're guilty because the judge said so, and the prosecution gets to pile on about your guilt, but you can't testify to the jury counter your guilt.
Yet somehow this a jury trial.
The other ridiculous thing was he was defaulted for namely not showing Youtube ad revenue for his shows, after youtube deleted his channel.
They also awarded an FBI agent, I guess for hurt feelings, not even related to the families.
1.5 Billion .... apparently not a political prosecution of a critic, designed to silence him by taking InfoWars off air.
You know when Alex offered $55 million to settle. The lawyers somehow decided to get less by pushing for the bankruptcy.
[+] [-] dang|1 year ago|reply
There's way too much nasty dross in this thread. No, the topic does not make that ok. As you'll see when you review the guidelines, "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
[+] [-] polygot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pclmulqdq|1 year ago|reply
Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
[+] [-] alwa|1 year ago|reply
I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether.
Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan...
[+] [-] sarchertech|1 year ago|reply
But because the largest creditor has a claim that is so much larger, the minority creditors will actually get less cash with the vitamin company offer.
The deal was structured so that the minority creditors would get more cash than from any other offer.
The only creditor that would get less cash from this offer is the sandy hook families and they are fine with that.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|1 year ago|reply
The other creditors get more cash from The Onion's offer. It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer remuneration to minority creditors.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|1 year ago|reply
Wait, isn't Alex Jone's essentially bankrupted by the ruling for the Sandy Hook parents? If he has that much cash to offer wouldn't that have been given to the parents who won the suit?
[+] [-] jasonlotito|1 year ago|reply
It is 100% not. It makes fewer creditors whole. Simple as that. It's worse for all creditors involved, as per the creditors. Any suggestion that this is "correct" or better is out of ignorance or deceit.
> The other creditors are far better off getting more cash
The nature of the original deal guaranteed the other creditors got more money than they would from the other offer by $100,000 more. Suggesting that they were getting less is ignorant.
> the onion gets to buy this website for no money.
Again, the Onion was spending real cash.
At best your are completely ignorant of the deal.
[+] [-] rtkwe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] UltraSane|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cogman10|1 year ago|reply
Not true. The entire point of bankruptcy proceedings is to resolve debt to the creditors.
And in fact, that wasn't the issue that the Judge took here. The judge didn't like the amount, not the creditors bid.
> The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.
The other creditors signed off on the deal which is why the Trustee took the bid. Alex Jones would have $3.5 million dollars less debt than if he took the FAUC bid. Which is exactly what the Trustee should prioritize, cutting back on Jone's debt.
[+] [-] reedf1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] benj111|1 year ago|reply
Yes, but shouldn't that already be due to the victims?
This is worse for the victims, because rather than getting that money, and future revenue, they just get that money.
And this all ignores the harm to the victims, of giving Jones control of Infowars again.
They aren't ever going to see all of this $1.5B. I doubt most even want all that money, what they probably want is for Jones not to be able to keep his mouth piece.
[+] [-] habinero|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
“‘It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,’ Judge Lopez said.”
is nonsense from an auction theoretical perspective.
First-price sealed-bid auctions are a vetted auction system [1]—almost all real estate and corporate mergers, for example, are sold like this, as are government tenders [2]. (They’re not as efficient as Vickrey auctions [3], but nobody actually does that.)
The bankruptcy estate is selling the asset. Not Alex Jones. The creditors should be deciding who buys their stuff. Not a judge. (The judge is there to coördinate the creditors, not substitute his judgement for theirs.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-price_sealed-bid_aucti...
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sealed-bid-auction.asp
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
[+] [-] geor9e|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] avianlyric|1 year ago|reply
The whole purpose of the deal was to give everyone, except the largest creditor, more cash. Sure the other deal offered 2x more cash, but the largest creditor is so disproportionately large compared to all the other creditors, they would have basically taken all the cash and left little to nothing for the other creditors. The rejected deal involved the largest creditor voluntarily giving up part of their claim, resulting in a much larger (I.e. something like 10x larger) payout for other creditors, despite the lower dollar value on the entire deal.
So yeah, the other creditors are far better off getting more cash. But to do that InfoWars would need to sell for many multiples more than highest bid seen so far.
[+] [-] cyanydeez|1 year ago|reply
Unfortunately, giving the victims no choice in who owns this stuff means allowing it to be reused for the same harm.
Money is not the only variable in the equation. This is not a legal interpretation of the judges decision.
[+] [-] iancmceachern|1 year ago|reply
Can his vitamins possibly be good? Who would buy these over day, centrum or Costco gummy vitamins.
This is weird to me.
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] immibis|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] archagon|1 year ago|reply
You have been lied to.
As I see it, the situation couldn't be any simpler: the oligarchs will take what they want, justice be damned. It was a done deal as soon as Musk entered the scene.
[+] [-] whoitwas|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fzeroracer|1 year ago|reply
Like you do see the obvious corruption here, right?
[+] [-] thorum|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NoGravitas|1 year ago|reply
> Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.
[+] [-] gms7777|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] OneLeggedCat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway48476|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway984393|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] seltzered_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amalcon|1 year ago|reply
If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want.
How is one situation different from the other?
[+] [-] patrickhogan1|1 year ago|reply
With that said bankruptcy judges do reject plans quite often and this is a high profile case.
[+] [-] ginkgotree|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lbwtaylor|1 year ago|reply
He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered. He's scum of the earth.
That business was taken away from him, and folks think that's too much? What the actual fuck.
[+] [-] hbn|1 year ago|reply
And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories about real living people being responsible. What's the difference?
[+] [-] bastawhiz|1 year ago|reply
The second-highest bidder was....an insurance company? Am I misunderstanding?
[+] [-] NylaTheWolf|1 year ago|reply
I am also confused on why it took a whole month for them to reject the sale when it seems to have been accepted for weeks.
[+] [-] impossiblefork|1 year ago|reply
A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments.
I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't fine somebody the value of an entire town unless he's done destruction of that order, or at least a fraction of that order.
[+] [-] jmward01|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kylecordes|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bena|1 year ago|reply
The court knows it can’t sell it back to Jones or a proxy of, but this decision also allows Jones to continue as if he hadn’t sold. And I think that’s what they’re aiming for
[+] [-] dhfuuvyvtt|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MarcoZavala|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dukeofdoom|1 year ago|reply
BTW, this is a lot more than pharmaceutical companies pay out for actually killing people.
I remember watching the trial and it was the most ridiculous thing every. The defendant (Alex) wasn't allowed to say he's innocent because the judge defaulted him. Yet the prosecution was allowed to bring in all kinds of evidence of his guilt (other than him being defaulted) and present that to the jury.
So in essence, you're guilty because the judge said so, and the prosecution gets to pile on about your guilt, but you can't testify to the jury counter your guilt. Yet somehow this a jury trial.
The other ridiculous thing was he was defaulted for namely not showing Youtube ad revenue for his shows, after youtube deleted his channel.
They also awarded an FBI agent, I guess for hurt feelings, not even related to the families.
1.5 Billion .... apparently not a political prosecution of a critic, designed to silence him by taking InfoWars off air.
You know when Alex offered $55 million to settle. The lawyers somehow decided to get less by pushing for the bankruptcy.
[+] [-] bhouston|1 year ago|reply
I suspect he may end up buying the assets himself or someone in this circle.