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Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

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Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#691

Post by josteink »

davidw wrote: post #541
ARandomerDude wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has it been otherwise? See also: Hunter Biden.

It's never 0 or 100. But it does ebb and flow, and boy is it about to flow. Comparing one guy who was in the hot seat only because of his surname to the incoming shit storm is risible.

> Comparing one guy who was in the hot seat only because of his surname

There exists boatloads of concrete evidence Hunter Biden was guilty of several categories of crimes, related to drugs, corruption, illegal firearms and child prostitutes.

There’s a reason he had to be pardoned by Joe, right? He essentially created a “the full laptop” pardon, complete unprecedented.

Any other person guilty of half these things would be in for life.

You got it backwards. He didn’t get a shit storm due to his last name. He got a free pass due to it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#692

Post by cogman10 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #671
NoGravitas wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> auction failed to maximize the amount of money I don't run auctions but something tells me there's a lot of research behind them that goes into optimizing for this precise thing. It's wild that the judge is disregarding the expertise of the person who was appointed by another judge to run the auction without asserting that the person is not qualified to run it.

It is quite wild and frankly just shocking.

The hearings in the last 2 days seemed to have Lopez agreeing with the creditors and not Jone's FUAC. Yet, somewhat seemingly out of the blue, he decided to deny the sale.

What's even more crazy about this ruling is he's told the trustee to come up with an alternative solution, that doesn't involve a new auction... But like no other guidance. That leaves the Trustee in a weird situation where the judge has said "I don't like what you did, fix it somehow, but not in a way that uses a new auction".

Frankly, this judge has just been pretty bad at their job. More than a few rulings have been just weird ramblings from the judge with unclear instructions to the trustee and the other parties.

And all this mainly appears to be because the judge doesn't like the amount that Infowars was sold for.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#693

Post by entropicdrifter »

NoGravitas wrote: post #654
StefanBatory wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does really appear that America's getting her own, homegrown oligarchs.

We've had them for a long time; basically the only time we've tried to reduce their power was the Great Depression and post-WWII era, but since the 70s we've been letting them off the leash.

Correct. 10/10 summary

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#694

Post by lewdev »

bArray wrote: post #565
impossiblefork wrote: post #249

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…

[flagged]

He lead a mob of his audience to threaten families that just had a child in their family murdered based on lies. There's no price on how horrible that is. Argue all you want, it went through a long process to get to that number so good luck with that.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#695

Post by jotux »

dnissley wrote: post #574
_zgx0 wrote: post #506

The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me. 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.

To be clear I haven't seen a single comment that could be charitably characterized as "supporting Alex Jones". I see a lot of comments that are pointing out that the judgment against him seems unreasonable given the damage he did to these families.

I see a few instance of people defending his actions as "free speech."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42387916

"View it for what it is: a deliberate attack on free speech. This is essentially legislating from the bench. They can't ban him from speaking but they can make it very VERY expensive to do so, and warn anyone else at the same time."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42385358

"Maybe the “victims” should go after the actual shooter for a billion dollars then.

Instead we have people crying that free speech is the actual evil crime here."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42384921#42389350

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#696

Post by cogman10 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

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 wor…

> 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.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#697

Post by logifail »

nativeit wrote: post #659
gms7777 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Wait, couldn’t this same argument be made in reverse? If the bids were open, the competing parties could simply go $1 above the highest offer, which suggest sealed bids are most appropriate to maximize the value. Auctions can’t be fairly judged in hindsight, generally speaking.

> If the bids were open, the competing parties could simply go $1 above the highest offer [..]

Isn't that what you want to happen?

All the auctions I've ever participated have repeated this very process until none of the buyers are prepared to raise their bid, at which point it appears the seller has got the highest price anyone will offer.

What am I missing?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#698

Post by freejazz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #686
freejazz wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they have to put up actual cash...

Do they though? Put up that portion of the debt owed to them by the estate, which should be valued in at least that amount.

Did you read the article? That's exactly what they did.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#699

Post by redeux »

ipaddr wrote: post #33
rfw300 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a good outcome, but it's also not fraudulent conveyance. Principally because the proceeds of the sale go to the victims.

They go to the creditors including his primary sponsor. This is not a bad outcome it's the only correct legal outcome. What you are saying is we should allow a creditor (of many) to sell an asset to whoever they choose at a lower market rate because it's the right political move in this one case. Why wouldn't those rules be applied in other cases.. you can sell any asset for a dollar to yourself and the bankrupt pers…

This isn’t about politics, it’s about justice. The only reason politics is even in the equation is because Jones has made his living as a political blatherskite.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#700

Post by cogman10 »

avianlyric wrote: post #138
alwa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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... Nope. Under the rejected deal, other creditors would have seen a larger payout, because aggrieved families are actual two separate groups. One with a claim near a billion dollars, and other with a…

Also of note, the other creditors agreed to this bid.
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