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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take the money from the result of the court process and try to buy infowars after this is all over.

They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a black mark on his credit report.

There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.

Besides others are in line as well.

And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

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> They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt.

It's a chapter 7 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy estate already owns the infowars assets.

> There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.

Specifically, the reason is protecting minority and junior creditors (including the debtor when assets are in excess of debts). If nobody offered up enough cash to pay off the debts in full and there is only one creditor who would rather have the business than the best cash offer, I don't think there'd be any reason for the courts to object. The big issue is, again, minority creditors getting less than their "fair share" of the assets, along with over-compensating senior claims with junior ones outstanding.

Neither are at issue here - The Onion's offer paid more cash to the minority creditors, the majority creditor opted into the deal, and the assets are clearly worth less than the debts.

"Cash to minority creditors" doesn't matter. "Cash to the estate" is all that matters. The Onion's offer carried $1.75 million in cash to the creditors. Alex Jones's vitamin company offered $3.5 million in cash.

The Onion bid was legally the correct bid to accept. It's got nothing to do with the cash amount, totally irrelevant.

Onions offer was 1.75 million in cash and one party forgiving the estate enough money for the minority creditors to be better off. Which mathematically requires the offer to be worth more than 3.5 million in cash to his estate.

> So they put it up for an auction to get the real value.

Except Onion’s bid minimized Alex Jones debt and was the preferred outcome by his creditors. Offering more cash isn’t the same as making a larger bid here.

It was the preferred outcome by the majority of his creditors, not by all his creditors (note that preferred != economically best). If the creditors were unanimous in their preferences, there would be no issue before the court.

No the judge stated he believes it could be sold at a higher price not that the deal wasn’t structured properly.

There’s been confusion on the math. Because one party was forgoing a portion of their share everyone else not just the other victims would be better off financially.

ps: Economic maximization alone isn’t relevant here. The underlying economic value matters when individuals aren’t voluntarily participating in a transaction. If I destroy your car then I owe you based on the cars worth, but if you trade in your car moderately under blue book perhaps you’re just in a hurry.

I think the word "preferred" has been a bit overloaded in this discussion. There is a sense of economic advantage that you may be using, and this deal in that sense is "preferred" for everyone. There is the other sense of stated preferences, and this deal is clearly not in the stated preferences of one of the parties (hence the appeal to a court).

I think if the creditors unanimously wanted this to happen, it probably would not have been reversed over the idea that there could have been a higher value. The fact that this issue was raised to a court indicates that at least one creditor did not prefer it.

The article mentions Alex Jones was objecting to the transfer rather than creditors. Having a new round of bidding, especially with increased publicity is a reasonable thing to do.

I’m simply agreeing with independent 3rd parties who state that The Onion’s bid was larger and better for the creditors. Alex Jones clearly doesn’t want his life’s worked turned into such an obvious mockery, but while he’d love to sell these business to his parents for 1 dollar but the courts are acting to maximize the transaction’s value. Thus he can only object in terms of monetary value not his personal preferences.

Does the business that offered to buy InfoWars also not get shafted by the sale to The Onion?

By one creditor agreeing to forgo their debt only if The Onion buys it, that single creditor puts any other potential buyer at a disadvantage. It seems the highest bidder, regardless of whether that is another Alex Jones entity, has a fair counterargument such that this type of sweetheart deal is not fair to interested purchasers.

In what way is that different from any other larger bid? The math is identical to them borrowing ~5 million and then getting it back immediately afterwards.

In both cases the other creditors end up with more money and Alex Jones ends up with less dept. It feels unfair because you’re judging the debt as uncollectible, but they would be receiving more cash from other winners so they aren’t just sacrificing hypothetical money.

I’m sure if a large enough offer was made they would happily walk away with everything they would be entitled to, but losing some cash for a final fuck to someone who profited from their suffering and actively attacked them seems like a reasonable tradeoff.

It is both unfair to Alex Jones and any third party bidding on the asset. If some entity was willing to pay more for InfoWars than the debt AJ owes his creditors, he would be able to keep the extra.

If A owes B and C money and has to sell some asset to satisify the claim, the only fair way to value the asset is to sell it in the open market, an auction. If D will pay $5 for it and E will pay $500 for it, it would be unfair to both A and E if B waves his hands and say he forgoes his claim so long as D gets to buy the item.

I understand that InfoWars is likely being sold at auction because no buyer was willing to purchase it for a price that would satisify the debt before bankruptcy, but there is a nomzero chance that some buyer shows up and is willing to pay more for it than someone else specifically to keep it out of that particular buyers hands. Strange. Farfetched. Buy possible. And it wouldn't be fair to allow preference by those owed the debt as it defeats the fair market price process.

It’s normal for entities owed money to be able to use that debt in these kinds of auctions. They still need to cover whatever fraction of debt is owed to 3rd parties with actual cash. This is a backstop as auctions often result in far lower values for assets than a longer sales process can provide.

It also results in debtors getting out of more debt.

> I understand that InfoWars is likely being sold at auction because no buyer was willing to purchase it for a price that would satisify the debt before bankruptcy, but there is a nomzero chance that some buyer shows up and is willing to pay more for it than someone else specifically to keep it out of that particular buyers hands. Strange. Farfetched. Buy possible. And it wouldn't be fair to allow preference by those owed the debt as it defeats the fair market price process.

A blind auction happened and if someone had offered even 1% of Alex Jones debt for info wars they would have won. The specific deal setup by the Onion provided 1.7 million dollars to satisfy other creditors, but the Texas families are owed 49 million. So even if the Connecticut families agreed to accept nothing any deal handing more than 1.7 million to the Texas families would have won.

Further, while it seems impossible for Alex Jones to ever get out of this debt, the Onion deal got him closest to that possibility.

> And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

This is absolutely true. Other media people that lost their job or channel, handle on various platforms, typically refresh to the same number of followers within a year or two.

> The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

They get to garnish those profits, too.

No bankruptcy resolves the debt. Otherwise there would be no point in a bankruptcy process.

No, not necessarily, and not in this case.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/alex-jones-cant-avoid-sandy-ho...

> Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.

> Bankruptcy can be used to wipe out debts and legal judgments, but not if they result from "willful or malicious injury" caused by the debtor, according to a decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston, Texas.

Bankruptcies have all sorts of exceptions like this for fraud, student loans, child support, unpaid taxes, etc.

Exactly.

The intent of bankruptcy law is to benefit the economy by allowing people and corporations to take risks and start over.

It's not to let them get away with defamation.

So there's a line between healthy economic risk-taking (bankruptcy discharges) and bad behavior (bankruptcy doesn't affect that).

FTX creditors would like to have a word with you.

It does seem likely to be true, although apparently, based on its bid, his affiliated company sees $3.5 million worth of extra value in keeping the Infowars brand and structure as opposed to going that route.

Alex Jones told the court that Alex Jones was just a character he played, so that character should now belong to the bankruptcy estate and be sold off. If Alex Jones were to play Alex Jones on TV ever again, that would be a copyright violation against whoever owns the Alex Jones character.

>It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

you'd be surprised how many fall off from a migration. It's no different network effect from anything else. The hardcore will follow, the passive will fall off. Even a cult following like this isn't immune to this (simply more resilient).

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