A bidding war is brewing for Alex Jones’ media empire

Both fans and foes are getting in on the bidding war for Alex Jones’ media company -- or at least trying to.

Some harbor hopes of continuing Jones’ brand of conservative rants and conspiracy mongering, while others dream of burying it for good. Ultimately, the winner may take all, including even Jones himself, since the company running the auction says there would be nothing stopping a new owner from rehiring “key employees and talent.”

Jones’ Infowars show and its parent company, Free Speech Systems, are being liquidated through a federal bankruptcy court to pay Sandy Hook families who sued Jones for defamation after he spread lies that they were just actors and their children were not really killed in the 2012 school shooting. Jones owes the families some $1.5 billion in damages for the pain and suffering they endured after some of his followers harassed and threatened them for years. At best, the families expect to collect just a small fraction of what they’re owed.

Who can buy? Read the fine print

A picture of the heavy oval wood desk where Jones has spewed his conspiracy theories now tops the auction house webpage describing the “Turnkey Business Opportunity.” Everything from Infowars’ brand name, production rights, archive library, social media accounts, cameras and microphones, ecommerce site and customer lists to hundreds of domain names are up for grabs, according to auction firms Tranzon Asset Advisors and ThreeSixty Asset Advisors. Assets can be bought by the piece or as a package, they say, adding “Additional Intellectual Property May be Added… Check Back Soon.”

“There are no restrictions on the use of any acquired property” so a buyer can use the assets “at their own discretion,” the auction houses said in a statement. “A Bidder has the right to choose … whether they want to continue Infowars operations.”

Bidders need to come up with a 10% deposit and sign a nondisclosure agreement before a Nov. 8 deadline. If their bids qualify and ”are deemed competitive” they will be invited to a live bidding session on Nov. 13. That auction will not be public – and it could be several weeks before the court-appointed federal bankruptcy trustee in Jones’ case, Christopher R. Murray, selects and publicly announces a winner. The trustee “reserves all rights to accept or reject bids,” the statement says, and the one that Murray deems best might not necessarily be the highest dollar amount.

Competing bids and competing agendas

Those who have expressed interest include conservatives like Roger Stone, a political consultant and Trump loyalist who recently posted a picture of himself on X sitting on Jones’ Infowars set, suggesting that he might pull together an investor group to make a bid for the company. The post drew hundreds of encouraging replies and followers eager to help make it happen, and Jones himself has said he’d welcome that. Stone did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jones’ followers have also been urging Elon Musk to buy the company and keep him on air. Musk did Jones a solid last winter when he reinstated Jones’ X account, which had been “permanently suspended” when X was still Twitter, due to posts that Twitter said “violate our abusive behavior policy." But while Musk gave Jones his account back, there is so far no indication that he’s seriously considering buying Infowars so he can also give Jones his job back.

For his part, Jones is expressing some optimism, saying on a recent show that “there are good groups of people I would work with that are going to try to get the company. I would say it's about a 70% chance that good folks buy it,” and “whatever organization comes out of this will just be stronger and bigger and more versatile and grow different legs of the stool or different hands, [like a] hydra.” But at the same time, Jones has also started seeding conspiracy theories about the process being rigged.

“Who knows whether the good bidders will get blocked out or something, and so they won’t be able to bid,” he said. “That’s why we’ve got a lot of plans and things behind the scenes to make sure it’s all fair … and it’s all being watched.”

'It's more than just a stunt'

Meantime, there are plenty of bidders on the other end of the political spectrum who are not shy about their intentions. Jeff Rotkoff, who recently launched a startup progressive media company in Texas called “The Barbed Wire,” is talking with potential partners and raising money on his website. Under a picture of a cowboy boot ready to stomp on the Infowars logo and a picture of Jones’ head, Rotkoff writes, “We’d like your help to make some mischief by buying Infowars.” But it’s more than just a stunt. Rotkoff says it would be a sort of poetic justice if he can sit in Jones’ place, and try to reverse what he sees as the harm Jones has caused since he started pedaling conspiracies in the 1990s.

“He’s damaged our state. He’s damaged our country. I think arguably he’s damaged the world,” Rotkoff says. “And we are deadly serious about being part of the effort to undo some of that harm.”

While Jones’ followers clearly would not be Rotkoff’s usual target audience, Rotkoff says if some of them stick around after a sale, that would provide a unique opportunity.

“Everyone one of us has someone who we’ve sort of lost down the misinformation/disinformation rabbit hole,” he says, “and any person who we can drop a rope or ladder to, that would let them climb their way out, is to my mind worth the effort.”

Angelo Carusone has similar hopes. As chairman and president of the liberal media watchdog group called Media Matters for America, he thinks he might strike gold with Jones’ archives, if they contain unscripted off-air moments where Jones -– or a guest — might offer a candid comment revealing that even he himself doesn’t believe the conspiracies he’s spewing.

“It [would be] kind of like an emperor-has-no-clothes moment,” Carusone says. “There have been moments where Jones has been increasingly discredited, but there hasn't been the one thing where somebody would say, ‘Oh, Alex Jones really is making it all up.’ ”

To Carusone, making a bid would be as much a defensive move as an offensive one. It’s worth buying the company, he says, just to block “a bad actor” from getting it.

“I guess we shouldn't discount the schadenfreude of it. There is a value to that,” he says. But he notes the most valuable part would be keeping Jones’ platform from someone with “a nefarious purpose, who wants to intensify the misinformation and disinformation crisis.”

Brian Krassenstein, who’s been something of a Jones gadfly on social media, also sees a secondary upside to getting into the bidding. When he posted a message about buying Infowars “just as a joke,” he says, the post started going viral, investors started calling to talk about getting a group together, and now he says, “It’s definitely serious.”

“Will it ultimately result in a winning bid? I don’t know,” he says. “But if nothing else, maybe we'll contribute to [driving] the bidding up a little bit and the victims of Sandy Hook will at least get a little more money.”

Copyright 2024, NPR

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