Summary

Alex Jones has sued Sandy Hook families and The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, alleging a conspiracy in their joint $1.75M bid to acquire Infowars during a bankruptcy auction.

Jones claims their bid unfairly appeared more valuable due to the families waiving portions of their payout, benefiting other defamation victims.

The bankruptcy trustee dismissed the allegations as baseless. Sandy Hook families vowed to hold Jones accountable, while the auction process faces judicial scrutiny over transparency.

A hearing is scheduled for November 25. Jones owes over $1B in defamation damages.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Assholes being assholes. What did you expect, he used to run a conspiracy, fake news and propaganda platform. I wonder when he’ll be US president.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    That fuckhead has no leg to stand on in that. Guess he thinks old diaper dons people will back him

    • PhAzE@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      Perhaps not, but those families have to pay for lawyers now to defend against this BS suit, wasting more of their money.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Hey now, no need to body shame the conspiracy clown. That fascist grifter has plenty of things we can criticize without acting like Republicans.

      Like how he’s an extremely pathetic bigot who keeps making up obviously fake anecdotes about his favorite scapegoats fearing him and everyone else adoring him wherever he goes.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Calling this a “Frankenstein bid” is the closest Alex Jones has ever gotten to reading a work of classic literature.

    • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      That reminds me, Alex Jones talks about Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke a lot, in fact, his belief that aliens are demons is plagiarized from it. But the funny thing is, there’s a searchable archive of transcripts for all his shows. And if you search for “Childhood’s End”, the first time he ever mentioned it was a week after the SyFy channel aired their three-part miniseries in 2015. So he’s clearly never actually read the novel, despite regularly talking about how much he loves it.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        Wait, it’s been since high school that I read that book admittedly, but wasn’t it kinda reversed, where concepts of demons are in universe subconsciously inspired by the appearance of the aliens, rather than the aliens themselves being demons?

        • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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          2 days ago

          Yes, but Alex Jones has the media literacy of a bowl of mashed potatoes. He picks and chooses what he likes from movies and tv shows to shape his conspiracy theories and ignores the rest. It’s a point that’s discussed often on the Knowledge Fight podcast. (Which is devoted to debunking infowars) He’s constantly missing the point of the media he claims to love.

    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      If the judges had any propriety for the rule of law they’d just start holding his lawyers in contempt for every new lawsuit they try to bring forth. If he has no one to represent him, the house of cards comes down.

      But we don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system full of politically appointed judges who spend their entire careers trying to dismantle the country.

    • blattrules@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m sure he’ll spend it all to make sure they don’t get any if he’s got the opportunity.

    • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      It’s a shame in “these cases” there isn’t prison for those in debt. It would be great to see these types in a *pillory (damn autocorrect) or stocks in the town square.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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        2 days ago

        There is debt prison in some jurisdictions. And that’s the real shame. Money shouldn’t land you in prison. All the other things he did should, but debt? No, that’s madness.

        • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 days ago

          I think we should be able to entertain any idea, then judge it for its merits. This idea has few, and are heavily outweighed by its negatives.

          • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Maybe if we set the amount owed before being imprisoned to something like 25 million…

            No, not really. Because I know how it would end up being used. But a man can dream.

      • nolefan33@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        They’d be too busy locking up every person who ever set foot in a hospital to get around to lil ole Alex Jones.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Well medical debt is exempt from other collections processes, so… (At least in America)

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        2 days ago

        A disturbing thing I learned recently: people put in stocks had a tendency to be sexually assaulted at night. I’d be all for it in Jones’s case.

  • cultsuperstar@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    God this guy is a piece of shit. Actually, I take that back. He’s not a piece of shit. He’s the whole pile of shit.

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Careful, Alex. By the time you’re done you might owe another billion to them, considering your thin knowledge of how anything works ever.

    • Skydancer@pawb.social
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      2 days ago

      When you owe the bank a thousand dollars, that’s your problem. When you owe the bank a million dollars, that’s the bank’s problem.

      The Sandy Hook families already know they will never recover the entire damages award. Spending real money on any future lawsuit won’t put another dime in their pockets, only add to the portion that never gets paid because he won’t make it in his lifetime. They’ll probably do it anyway for the satisfaction of making him squirm in front of a judge, but owing another billion is irrelevant.

  • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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    2 days ago

    And it’s going to go nowhere. This is just the latest in Alex’s decade+ campaign of harassment against these people.

    There was nothing wrong let alone illegal about the auction or the circumstances of The Onion’s win. He’s just butthurt that his little scheme to have Elon and Roger Stone buy infowars and give it back to him didn’t work.

    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      This is just the latest in Alex’s decade+ campaign of harassment against these people.

      Can’t they just sue him back because he is basically doing what he did in the first place and got fucked over to begin with?

      • resetbypeer@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        If so, he’s hoping for post January 6. Stall and delays, just like all the stuff the orange Cheeto and cronies are doing. It’s really time the pitchforks are being picked up.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        I am not sure if it is a full hold, but they are investigating this and The Onion bid.

        But yeah. The goal is obviously to stall and escalate. Likely with the hope of getting a ruling (SC or not) that taking companies away from white people is unconstitutional.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          Not white people, people of all colours when they are useful to the Rs

          If a white leftist had Roger Stone take their company away that would be completely legal

      • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        The judge didn’t “side” with him. It was a matter of procedure and as I said, it will go nowhere. It’s just yet another stalling tactic and continued harassment from Alex Jones.

        • Nougat@fedia.io
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          2 days ago

          This is correct, but the judge’s statement about it seemed pretty biased.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I think that would depend on the judge that the next cases land on, if it’s a maga judge then doing justice won’t be a priority. Jones seems to be playing for time and appears to hope that Trump’s next government can change the playing field for him.

          Why justice will become less apolitical in the USA: Maga is fascist and fascism is a totalitarian form of government. In totalitarianism there is no room for an independent judiciary. The USA is only at the beginning of it’s maga era, so it still has a mostly independent judiciary, but dismantling that independence is already a part of the plan. And that dismantling can go fast, in Poland it only took a few years to do so. After their 2015 election, the polish Law and Justice party (aka pis) rushed the process with a series of illegal coups to get it done asap, I think their reforms were mostly finished by 2018.

          In other words, I wouldn’t count out Alex Jones just yet.

  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    The dude is a giant shit stain and an embarrassment on society.
    That said, he might actually have a point with this suit.

    If I’m understanding the situation correctly, you have a situation where his website and media platform are up for auction to pay the huge judgment against him.

    Ordinarily that would be fairly simple, various interested parties submit bids for whatever is on the block, and whoever bids highest gets it.

    But it seems like in this case a significant portion of the ‘money’ from the ‘winning bid’ came from families who would receive that money agreeing to forfeit it as part of this particular bid. So the bid was ‘we will pay XYZ in cash and defendants ABC will forfeit their claims if we win’. And furthermore, there is a claim of collusion between the winning plaintiffs and the auctioneer. That is of course a huge ethical issue.
    One could, without in any way supporting Jones, make the argument that due process is not being followed here and the auctioneer is not maintaining impartiality.

    Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no love for the guy. But as much as I dislike him and the awful effect he has on our country, the judicial process must stay neutral. That is the difference between a fair trial and a witch hunt. If it truly was the case that the auctioneer was not neutral, and acted with the goal of ensuring Jones did not maintain any control over InfoWars, then he has an excellent chance of winning this lawsuit and at the very least having a new auction process for his media empire.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      the sandy hook families can easily make the argument that alex jones has frequently lapsed and incurred new defamations and that the onion mitigates that harm.

      Plus a portion of those damages are punitive so the state has an interest in seeing punitive damages be punishing to set an example.

      If sandy hook waives punishment damage because they see justice served in the ruling, that is very much the goal of anti defamation laws.

    • Entropywins@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Just like the legal system allowed him to transfer assets to his father, who is the other party bidding on info wars… he is just trying to buy it with the money he hid during bankruptcy. You have a point but I don’t really care anymore if the legal system is a witch hunt with these snakes all the do is lie cheat and steal while I have to be good and maintain a “neutral” justice system for them to fuck everyone else over with.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      An auction doesn’t necessarily need to go with the highest bidder. Things can be sold to whoever the beneficiary of the sale decides. The families of Sandy Hook are taking less money than they would have otherwise by taking the Onion’s bid and they are accepting of that fact that they will get less money as a result. The other outcome is Alex Jones buying his company back or some other company that may use the platform for more continued disinformation. The Onion is the only business that can give confidence that their platforms will continue to push Satire rather than spewing hatred into the world.