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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

#771

Post by edmundsauto »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #316
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the asset. You actually can, so long as it's the best offer for the other creditors. So long as you can come up with sufficient cash for the minority creditors you're entitled to dispose of the asset in any way you see fit. The Pennsylvania families came up with…

My point is going over your head. Pledging money that you will never receive to get over the finish line is not the best offer. You could not consider such debt in any other purchase. Going back to that example, if the guy owed $2B pledged to buy the asset for $500M and the other one didn't even know about the auction, or instead pledged $501M, then the one who was owed less would be stealing from the one who was owe…

My understanding is that the other (minor) creditors would get more cash in the Onion offer because the Sandy hook reps weren’t going to take their huge cut in the event their preferred bid was accepted. That means in any other deal, the other creditors would be strictly worse off. The families would be financially worse off but they were the ones driving the decision, so they clearly felt holistically better off.

I don’t see how they shouldn’t be able to take less money themselves as long as the other creditors also got more money.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#772

Post by johnnyanmac »

anon291 wrote: post #76
UltraSane wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pure bullshit is what it is.

[flagged]

Alex Jones shuffles assets moments before a legal proceeding (or perhaps during it), goes bankrupt, and his shuffled assets can buy the assets he "lost". I don't have enough legal knowledge to call it fraud, but it sure sounds like what I'd call as a layman "pure bullshit".

>How exactly is Alex Jones supposed to pay $1 billion dollars to anyone?

That sounds like the job of a bankruptcy court now, doesn't it?

Pure bullshit #2: all creditors and debtors agreed on something and suddenly Jones himself says "no not that way!" Why does the debtor get to decide where and how he sells the assets he no longer owns?

>What is the purpose of this entire spectacle?

in case you forgot, a "major news network" tried to play off a tragic school shooting that isn't even 15 years old as a hoax. The family sued and he lost a defamation case over it. In the US (it's REALLY hard to claim defamation in the US, so you really screw up if you lose here).

On top of all of that all, Jones did all his darndest to drag out and overall disrespect the legal system though a mix of shuffling assets, missing court dates, and so many other pieces of foul play that would get any normal citizen charged with perjury (he may have been charged that). That is surely why his ruling costs ran so high.

So the purpose of this entire spectacle runs on 2 major points:

1. don't try to play off a modern, highly televised and recorded event in modern history as a "hoax", especially on a topic as serious as school shootings

2. Don't be a legal asshole and piss off judges in a court case.

That latter one shouldn't even need to be said, but between this and the Gawker trial we clearly have a lot of children who treat the judicial system like it's some casual date on Tinder. Judges don't like being ghosted.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#773

Post by pclmulqdq »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #715
pclmulqdq wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not there because the auction was run in a terrible way - it was very hard to submit a bid and the due date got moved forward at the last minute. There were rumblings that Elon Musk was going to put in a big bid.

No but honestly who has any use for the Infowars brand besides Alex Jones and the Onion? What would anyone do with it to get a return on their investment?

I don't really know, but Elon Musk has been known to buy media companies that don't give him a good ROI, and he was making noise about putting a bid together on this one.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#774

Post by pclmulqdq »

vizzier wrote: post #646
pclmulqdq wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your theoretical framework you can. In real-life bankruptcy court, you almost certainly can't.

Honestly I don't see how this theoretical framework is much different from corporate leveraged buyouts.

This isn't a leveraged buyout. Also this structure is not at all like a leveraged buyout.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#775

Post by kypro »

Eextra953 wrote: post #544
_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.

It shocking to me too. I can't understand how people are 'both sides-ing' this or just supporting him under some free speech argument. Free speech has limits and a court found Jones went too far and that cost him his business.

People have been arguing the same bogus free speech point in the UK recently because people have been arrested for saying things that are anti-immigration and offensive online.

People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue. If you go around tweeting hateful things about the Royal family and the courts find you guilty, don't be surprised if that costs you your freedom. It's pretty simple.

Alex is legally free to saying whatever he wants, but he had the wrong views on Sandy Hook and his wrong views hurt the families affected, therefore he deserves to lose his business.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#776

Post by cogman10 »

singleshot_ wrote: post #737
cogman10 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

Out of curiosity, does anyone in this thread who is commenting on the quality of this judge or the sanity of his ruling practice bankruptcy law? I don’t, and I’m having a hard time evaluating these claims.

Not a whole lot of bankruptcy lawyers on the internet that I've seen.

But here's one business law lawyer/professor breakdown of the proceedings that I think is pretty good [1]

[1] https://confrontationality.substack.com/p/bankrupt-alex-jone...

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#777

Post by pyrale »

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…

That is not what happened, though.

One group of creditors said they were willing to abandon some of their claims, which means other creditors would have gotten a larger share of the smaller bid, effectively making these other creditors better off.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#778

Post by uv-depression »

_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.

You're surprised? In any vaguely political thread HN is pretty much just a more well-spoken 4chan. Moderation here is entirely based on tone, not content, which along with its techno-libertarian origins makes it the perfect breeding ground for fascists and pseudo-intellectualism.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#779

Post by norlygfyd »

bhouston wrote: post #114

Remember that this was made possible by the intervention of Elon Musk. I suspect he may end up buying the assets himself or someone in this circle.

This was not made possible by the intervention of Musk. If you're referring to the X Corp objection, this has absolutely nothing to do with that.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#780

Post by m10i »

DrillShopper wrote: post #741
singleshot_ wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, does anyone in this thread who is commenting on the quality of this judge or the sanity of his ruling practice bankruptcy law? I don’t, and I’m having a hard time evaluating these claims.

[flagged]

(To put this in a less inflammatory way)

if it is indeed true that this judge was appointed by Trump (I haven't looked into it), it is reasonable to believe that it probably wasn't based on merit or understanding of law. This is because he has a long history of promoting/installing people that he believes (whether or not it turns out to be the case) will obey him above all else.

Being "fit for the task" is an afterthought.

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