Judge to audit if conspiracy theorist’s bankruptcy auction was fair, which could delay buying process for satire site
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” the judge, Christopher Lopez, said in an emergency hearing on Thursday afternoon. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
Literally the point of the suit is that The Onion was not the highest bidder. From the article:
The exact bid amount offered by the Onion for InfoWars remains unknown, but it has been reported it was lower than First United American’s bid of $3.5m.
The victims of Jones decided it was better to get less money and not allow the brand to go to one of his allies to continue the usual operations. They are saying that even though they effectively own the brand, that they don't have the right to choose who it's sold to.
Guardian's slow on the news. This was known yesterday.
There were only two bidders, the Onion and a backup bidder. The judge is looking into how the bidding process was run, because the Onion won with a lower bid than the back up bidder.
The Onion’s offer was seen as a better deal because some of the related Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to help pay off Jones’s other creditors.
Both article explains that. They used a “credit” given by the Sandy Hooks survivors so that their money from this sale would go to Alex’s other debts first. So it was less money but allocated more beneficially for jones.