Alex Jones' media company heads to auction
A closed auction for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' media company assets is underway Wednesday.
Money from the sale of Jones' Infowars will go toward paying the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims who won a defamation case against Jones after he spread conspiracy theories and misinformation that the shooting was a hoax.
Jones owes the families $1.5 billion.
Wednesday's live auction is for the intellectual properties owned by Free Speech Systems Media Holdings, which includes Infowars, its production rights, archives and social media accounts.
The auction also packaged the Infowars store to include its web domain, trademarks, contracts, e-commerce platform and customer lists. Jones' store sells supplements and apparel.
The auction lists approximately 300 domain names owned by the company.
Bidders might also get Jones' armored truck, a motor home, production equipment, gym equipment and office furniture.
They will not get Jones' personal social media accounts. Court proceedings on if those will become available are pending.
Jones on his show Tuesday said the show would continue regardless of the outcome of the auction, stating a new studio was already in the works.
Potential bidders were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they were allowed to bid.
Bidders were also allowed to bid on the studio and its production equipment as a whole and negotiate a new lease for the Austin facility.
Physical items not sold during Wednesday's auction will go to another auction on Dec. 10.
The listing states some of the physical items might be part of Wednesday's auction if packaged with the intellectual property.
Bankruptcy filing
Jones and Austin, Texas-based Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022, when relatives of many victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, won lawsuit judgments of more than $1.4 billion in Connecticut and $49 million in Texas.
The relatives said they were traumatized by Jones’ comments and his followers’ actions. They testified about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, some of whom confronted the grieving families in person saying the shooting never happened and their children never existed. One parent said someone threatened to dig up his dead son’s grave.
Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook shooting happened.