> Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.
I don't run auctions but something tells me there's a lot of research behind them that goes into optimizing for this precise thing. It's wild that the judge is disregarding the expertise of the person who was appointed by another judge to run the auction without asserting that the person is not qualified to run it.
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 weird situation where the judge has said "I don't like what you did, fix it somehow, but not in a way that uses a new auction".
Frankly, this judge has just been pretty bad at their job. More than a few rulings have been just weird ramblings from the judge with unclear instructions to the trustee and the other parties.
And all this mainly appears to be because the judge doesn't like the amount that Infowars was sold for.
But here's one business law lawyer/professor breakdown of the proceedings that I think is pretty good [1]
[1] https://confrontationality.substack.com/p/bankrupt-alex-jone...
>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.
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.
I don't really doubt that judges would bring something up to litigants but I do really doubt the bar would actually do something.
Oh, nothing?
Natural consequences might be that the judge and their family no longer get to go to the yacht extravagant social gatherings, their kids may no longer have an in at their preferred university, or they may have even have the propaganda machine turned against them - potentially endangering them.
There are so many potential consequences that it’s not even worth trying to mention them all. These are all real threats that keep people in these types of positions aligned with the original intent for putting them there.
Real or hypothetical? Still don't see any evidence. FYI it is this kind of posting that goes nowhere, that helped re-elect Trump. People are tired of it and the gaslighting. Hope this helps.
What I’m describing is not some abstract concept, it’s part of human society and I have no doubt you’ve experienced it yourself.
This is actualy quite common with judges. Or so i heard from Popehat who is a practicing lawyer. What is going on is that the judge is feeling that one side is making a stronger argument, in their opinion, and they then tend to give more procedural leeway to the other side. In order to be, or appear to be unbiased. Then commentators or sometimes even the plantifs interpret it as the judge signaling that the judge is agreeing with them.
Supposedly this is common enough that lawyers get worried if the judge is too “nice” with their side.
For starters, one issue here is the Judge is just, frankly, bad at giving instructions. He left how the auction should be ran up to the Trustee who ultimately used an auction company which handles these sorts of liquation auctions. He didn't give clear instructions on what he wanted.
FAUC (alex jones's new company) did not raise any issues with the auction until after they found out that they lost. They had multiple communications with the auction house and the trustee right up until the winners were announced. It was only after they lost that they started throwing a stink about how the auction was ran.
Frankly, it's a bad faith argument by FAUC that's just sour grapes over losing. They were always going to challenge the results on a loss, but it does look bad for them that they didn't do that until after the loss.
Lopezes problem with the auction was mainly that he felt like the amounts were too low. He didn't really explain why he felt that and has left everything really ambiguous (not a good judge IMO). He has left the managing of infowars under the care of the Trustee and has basically given them a "fix it" order with really no clear guidelines on how they are supposed to do that (other than don't do another auction).
Obviously that would add another two years of misery, but still...
Everyone has 2 weeks to file an appeal to this ruling and the Judge has given 30 days for the Trustee to figure out how to fix things.
We'll see what happens.
In any event, yes, likely we are going to see this dragged out like crazy. What's wild is IDK what happens when all the infowars funds dry up if this is stuck in litigation. Bankruptcies aren't usually drawn out like this (and it's somewhat designed to be very streamlined).