Bob Daemmrich/Zuma
The court-ordered auction of conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones’ company Infowars took place on Wednesday. By late morning Texas time, Jones said the auction had been closed, but the winner, to be chosen by a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, had not yet been announced.
The proceeds will be distributed to Infowars’ creditors, with the large majority going to the Sandy Hook families who won a series of enormous judgments, roughly totaling $1.5 billion, against Jones and Infowars for lying about the deaths of their children on air.
Jones pushed back on suggestions the sale could end his broadcasting career.
The bids for the company’s assets are sealed, but Jones has made it clear for months that he hopes a supporter will acquire the company and keep him in place, saying on Wednesday that he was “working with” one such bidding group. But he also signaled on Wednesday that if the “bad guys,” as he put it, won the auction, he might not accept the results and would demand a judge get involved.
Each potential purchaser had to submit a non-disclosure agreement in order to bid on Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, and its various holdings. CNN reported that one interested party, described as a supporter of Jones “who wants the host to continue broadcasting on the Infowars platform he founded,” submitted a bid in the “seven-figure” range. (The name of that person or entity has not been publicly reported.) The Associated Press reported that one bidder is believed to be Trump ally Roger Stone. In Jones’ “bad guys” camp were bids from the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters and The Barbed Wire, a Texas-based progressive site, neither of which were expected to win.
As his fate was being decided behind closed doors on Wednesday, Jones took to the air, sitting behind his desk, surrounded by his usual piles of printouts and trying to approximate his normal level of bluster. “It’s a little stressful, but no word has come in yet,” he said at one point, at an uncharacteristically normal tone and volume.
In his broadcast, Jones framed the auction as an existential threat—and repeatedly called on his supporters to buy his products and donate money and Bitcoin. He declared himself to be “happy as a pig in you-know-what” in the midst of “battle” and dismissed the attorneys for the Sandy Hook families as “clowns.”
“Infowars is an idea,” he declared at another point. “Infowars is a family. Infowars is stronger than ever.”
He also suggested that the auction was rigged. “The good guys I’m working with were told in writing it would take a month to certify their purchase,” he groused, “but they were told if the bad guys won they would get it instantly.” That, he said, was an example of how “Christians and conservatives” are held to different rules, adding that it “is why the American people are mad.”
As he spoke, he bitterly pushed back on suggestions the sale could result in the end of his broadcasting career. He said he’d set up another studio to continue working from if Infowars is seized and shut down, representing a supposedly new media entity, dubbed the Alex Jones Network.
“It’s all set up,” he said on air. “The crew, the studios.” Indeed, the new company already has a website shilling products, including a “commemorative” Star Wars-style poster with Jones depicted as Luke Skywalker and George Soros as Darth Vader, and a $150 knife dubbed the “1776 Devastator Tactical Blade” that is signed by Jones.
None of this, however, means that Jones can get out of paying the Sandy Hook families. They’ll have license to go after his future earnings until the judgment they’re owed is paid in full.
A second auction featuring additional Infowars and Jones assets is scheduled for December; the auction house said in an announcement that those items may include “production equipment, office furniture, computers, gym equipment, a Terradyne Armored truck, a Winnebago Motorhome and more.”
