Alex Jones is trying to stop the sale of Infowars. Elon Musk’s X just got involved – Mother Jones

Alex Jones speaks outside the Dirksen Building on Capitol Hill in Washington in September 2018.José Luis Magana/AP

On Thursday afternoona federal bankruptcy judge in Texas ordered an evidentiary hearing to review the auction process resulted in Infowars is sold to satire site the Onionsaying he wanted to guarantee the “process and transparency” of the sale. Infowars‘ founder, conspiracy mega-entrepreneur Alex Jones, has unsurprisingly stated that the auction process was “rigged” and promised that the appraisal process would return the site to him, while the Onion‘, the CEO said Mother Jones and other news media that the sale will go ahead. For reasons no one has yet explained, lawyers for X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media giant now owned by Elon Musk, appeared at the hearing and asked to be included in future communications about the case.

“I’m told Elon will be very involved in this,” Jones said during a live broadcast on X. After Infowars was seized and the site closed, Jones immediately began operating under the name and brand of a new venture called the Alex Jones Network, streaming on added, somewhat mysteriously, ‘The cavalry is here. Trump is angry.” (He later explained that “Trump knows I am one of his biggest defenders.”)

An attorney who appeared for X did not respond to a request for comment; nor does X’s press office. Onion CEO Ben Collins, formerly a disinformation journalist at NBC News, said this Mother Jones on Friday morning: “We won the bid. The idea that he would gracefully walk away from this without doing any of this stuff is funny in itself. In a statement reprinted by Variety and other outlets, Collins said the sale is “currently ongoing, pending standard processes.” Collins had previously said the plan was to relaunch Infowars as a satirized version of himself in January.

However, when this strange situation arose, Infowars‘ website came back online on Friday afternoon; Shortly afterwards, Jones and his staff had also returned Infowarsstudios. All Friday and Saturday morning the site was full of stories in which Jones preemptively defeated Jones’ victory over the Onion.

“I told you so,” Jones crowed during a Friday evening broadcast from behind his usual desk. “If you want a fight, you’ve got one.”

Jones promised that too, even if Infowars is sold, he would sue anyone who “imitates” him, as well as “the major Democratic gun control group” involved in the sale. (The New York Times has reported that Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun law reform, plans to advertise on the relaunched, satire version of the site.)

Judge Christopher Lopez of the Southern District of Texas is overseeing the yearlong bankruptcy process Infowars. The company and Jones have personally filed for bankruptcy protection amid civil lawsuits filed by the parents of children who died in Sandy Hook. Jones was found liable by default for defaming the Sandy Hook families by repeatedly claiming the mass shooting was a “hoax” and suggesting some parents were actors. During Thursday’s hearing Lopez said: “No one should feel comfortable with the results of the auction” until the evidentiary hearing was held. Christopher Murray, the court-appointed trustee who issued the statement OnionThe parent company of Global Tetrahedron LLC, which would be the winner of the auction, discussed the bids privately. According to Bloomberg, Murray told Lopez that Global Tetrahedron’s offer was a better option because the Sandy Hook families agreed to give up some of the money owed to them to pay off Jones’ other creditors.

“I’ve always thought my goal was to maximize recovery from unsecured creditors,” Murray told Bloomberg. “And they are clearly better under one bid than under another.”

Jones has made it clear that he was working with a group of what he called “good guy” bidders, who he hoped would buy the site and keep it up and running. The only other bid besides the Onion’s was $3.5 million from First United American Companies LLC, the company that operates Jones’ online supplement store.

The witness hearing is expected to take place on Monday.