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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

#801
post #750

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…

Infowars and Alex Jones have some fanatic followers. It should be investigated if the judge has been threatened to come to this conclusion.

The Onion should be investigated for making a false bid for which they never had the money for.

>Jones' attorney Ben Broocks told Lopez at a hearing on Monday that the Onion only put up half as much cash as the $3.5 million offer from First American United Companies but boosted its bid with "smoke and mirrors" calculations.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#802
post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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(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 afterth…

I don't think the trump admin really cared one way or another about a bankruptcy judge.

FWIW, Lopez has the credentials for the job. [1] He was a bankruptcy lawyer and teacher for years before being appointed as a judge.

I say this as someone not a fan of his rulings. I think the "he was a Trump appointee" critiques are misplaced. He's simply isn't good as a judge which, arguably, is a pretty different skillset from being a lawyer.

[1] http://nbconf.org/team/hon-chris-lopez/

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'll never be able to stop him from creating "The Alex Jones Off the Deep End Show" where he thrills listeners with zany tales of conspiracies that can only be held at bay with these brand new supplements So you're unable to think about this problem without putting your bias at the forefront? > He just has to forfeit Infowars and its assets. Actually, with this ruling, he does not. Roger Stone's group will get a…

> So you're unable to think about this problem without putting your bias at the forefront? He is a conspiracy theorist, this is his thing. And he sells supplements on his show. Those are facts, right? I suppose my bias only shows with the characterization of "zany tales"? But IMO it's not even a stretch, this guy seems really quite off base. > Why is forfeiture of his platform a necessity in your eyes? I mean, it's n…

[flagged]

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#804
post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamation is free speech now?

No defamation was ever proven in court. It was a default judgement.

Allowing a default judgement in a civil case is equivalent to pleading guilty in a criminal case

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#805
post #587
post #541

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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.

Can you point us to videos of other people doing lots of federal drug & gun crimes who get away with it?

They rejected a plea deal. That almost never happens. He was 100% guilty of some things, but they wanted to drag out the whole process for publicity rather than to actually do some semblance of 'justice'.

And some of these incoming people threatened to keep going after him just to inflict pain on his father.

These are no longer the party of Romney and McCain. "The cruelty is the point".

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#806
post #801
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infowars and Alex Jones have some fanatic followers. It should be investigated if the judge has been threatened to come to this conclusion.

The Onion should be investigated for making a false bid for which they never had the money for. >Jones' attorney Ben Broocks told Lopez at a hearing on Monday that the Onion only put up half as much cash as the $3.5 million offer from First American United Companies but boosted its bid with "smoke and mirrors" calculations.

Yes and Lopez rejected that as an issue. He also accepted the logic of why the Trustee picked the onion.

What Lopez did not like was the dollar amount and how the auction was ran, that's it.

Lopez kept the Trustee on board, though, because he doesn't believe the Trustee did anything wrong (Strangely since the Trustee organized the auction).

It wasn't a false bid, it was a bid that would have relieved Jones of more debt than the bid FAUC put up. Which was accepted by his creditors.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The "winning" offer was formulated such that its cash value depended upon the next best offer. I.e., when you strip away the complexity it was of the form "next best offer + $". That this bid "won" indicates the "auction" was not a sealed-bid auction of the kind you are thinking of.

Wait no none of this is right, it doesn't make it an unsealed auction just because one or more of the bids has terms and conditions. This is how every real-estate transaction is conducted.

What makes it fine in the end is that once you collect all the bids and resolve the legal paperwork you can assign values to the individual bids and compare them which is how people who sell their homes choose what offer to go with. And home sellers do consider intangibles and go with lower-cash offers all the time.

I don't really understand what all the legal kerfuffle is about. Is the court really going to force the families into a sale they don't want when the sale is for their benefit however they choose to define it?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. People should split intent and outcome. So for example: you going to prison is a punishment. Your wife leaving you because of it, is not part of the punishment, that is an outcome, but it is not an outcome that is intended. The same here. There are damaged to be payed to the victims of alex' Jones heinous lies that have provably made the lives of people that were already victims so much worse. The ju…

> Jones didn't turn up for court and had contempt for the court by ignoring direct orders they probably punished him by making the sum very high. Just fyi he did, the court kept claiming he had to produce documents / analytics he said he didn’t have. There’s no evidence the documents ever existed, but judge disagreed, so they issued a default judgement (ie no trial). https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055864452/alex-jon…

Just FYI, the plaintiffs lawyers (not necessarily the court) was requesting financial documents that FSS LLC are required by law to have. They had two years to comply and did not.

Also FYI 'a trial was never held' is a common talking point used by Alex Jones on his program. He and his lawyers are responsible for there not being a trial. Their conduct guaranteed that there was no trial. It's a farce for him to complain about something that he is responsible for.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#809
post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is probably the correct decision. 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 b…

It's correct if there's a new, open auction that does even better than the current Onion offer.

The judge ruled out holding a new auction.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#810

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…

Judge Lopez was appointed by Trump, so I'd assume that he's acting under instructions. Why would Trump have appointed a judge who wouldn't do favors for him?

I hope you realize that he can't fire judges just because he appointed them.
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