• Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Yeah, I really buy that. About as much as him saying he had nothing to do with AEJ holdings, or had no stake in the companies that his parents owned with him.

      If he’s not got a direct financial stake in this, he’s got an under the table one. No one affiliated with Jones should be able to buy InfoWars.

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are owed $975 million. They are supporting the Onion’s bid by pledging as much of that as necessary to beat the opposing bid (remember, they have rights to most of the auction proceeds).

            An analogy: you put something on eBay, and then decide you want to keep the item for yourself. You can easily outbid anyone else, because in the end you are (mostly) paying yourself. The only question is how much eBay’s tiny cut will be.

            Well, Sandy Hook plaintiffs are basically putting Infowars on eBay but determined to win the auction. The winner of the auction is a foregone conclusion, so the only question is what small cut some other folks are going to get.

            • Pandantic [they/them]
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              1 hour ago

              Then the question is, why weren’t they just given full contol of the infowars business in the first place if that’s what they really wanted?

              • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                28 minutes ago

                Because there remains an unanswered question: what small cut some other folks are going to get.

                The only way to answer that is with an auction. Just like in the above analogy, the only way to determine your eBay fees is to actually have an eBay auction.

                And they did have an auction, but the presiding judge didn’t like the auction rules. They can change the rules and thus change the cut, but the winners won’t change.

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            This is the first step to failing twice.

            FUAC might get another chance to bid, but so will the Onion. And the Onion will outbid FUAC, because they have up to $965 million available if necessary.

            • GiuseppeAndTheYeti
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              5 hours ago

              The Onion is buying it to kill it. They won’t want to recklessly spend a good chunk of their valued worth just to cut off the head of a hydra. Even if it’s better for the family’s true intentions of silencing Jones.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                5 hours ago

                The Sandy Hook families have agreed to reduce the amount they are owed in the settlement in order to make up the difference between The Onion and the highest bidder. This allows other creditors to end up getting paid more despite The Onion’s bid being less because the families are taking less of a cut.

                So it’s not The Onion paying more money, it’s the families taking less, and the families aren’t doing this for the money.

              • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                5 hours ago

                Nobody wants to spend much money on it. That’s why the Onion will win the auction, they can use $965 million of Alex Jones’s own debt, courtesy the Sandy Hook families, to pay for it.

        • ZMonster@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          Honestly this is straight out of the Infowars playbook. AJ has been fleecing racist morons with his pals for decades.