The bankruptcy judge overseeing the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars has raised concerns over the process by which satirical publication The Onion won the bid for the conspiracy theorist’s website and related properties, ending his 25-year run of the media company.
During a status conference on Thursday, hours after Jones raged on his final InfoWars broadcast that the “deep state” was shutting him down, District Judge Christopher Lopez said “no one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” Lopez said from Texas court. “I personally don’t care who wins the auction … I care about process and transparency.”
An evidentiary hearing will determine whether advisers who ran the auction conditioned “a full and fair process,” according to the judge.
The hearing date has not yet been scheduled.
The Onion and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims announced the purchase of InfoWars properties on Thursday, years after Sandy Hook families sued Jones for defamation for calling the massacre a hoax, prompting his chapter 11 bankruptcy. He owes them roughly $1.5 billion in defamation judgments related to his statements about the 2012 massacre, in which a gunman fatally shot 26 people, including children between six and seven years old.
“The joint bid from Global Tetrahedron and the Connecticut families has been selected as the winning bid for InfoWars,” The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins said in a statement to The Independent. “The sale is currently underway as part of the standard processes.”
