Important Takeaways:
- A company affiliated with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked a federal judge on Monday to disqualify a bid by the satirical news outlet The Onion to buy Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, alleging fraud and collusion.
- The company, First United American Companies, which is affiliated with a Jones website that sells dietary supplements, was the only other bidder at the recent auction, offering $3.5 million. In a filing in federal bankruptcy court in Houston, a lawyer for the company asked the judge to declare it the winning bidder instead of The Onion.
- The lawyer, Walter Cicack, claimed that the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the auction improperly colluded with The Onion and families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in naming The Onion the winning bidder. Cicack also alleged the trustee violated rules for the sale set by the judge, and said the company’s cash offer was twice the amount of The Onion’s.
- Over the weekend, Collins posted a series of comments about the auction on X, formerly known as Twitter.
- “Long and short of it: We won the bid and — you’re not going to believe it — the previous InfoWars folks aren’t taking it well,” he wrote.
- Collins said last week that The Onion planned to turn the Infowars website into a parody site, taking aim at conspiracy theorists and other social media personalities while promoting gun violence prevention efforts.
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By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury announced on Wednesday it will hold the size of coupon auctions steady in the upcoming quarter when it conducts a small “contingency auction” that an official said would test its ability to borrow following a cyber attack.
It was unclear how much of a role, if any, the White House had in crafting the Treasury’s quarterly debt policy statement, which was the first since President Donald Trump took office last month.
The U.S. Senate has yet to confirm Trump’s Treasury secretary nominee, Steven Mnuchin. Several Treasury officials from the Obama administration have left, with their positions filled on a temporary basis by career bureaucrats or political appointees from the last administration.
The latest policy statement was made by Monique Rollins, Treasury’s acting assistant secretary for financial markets and a holdover from the Obama administration. A Treasury official told reporters separately that the new political leadership was aware of the debt policies announced on Wednesday.
Rollins said in the policy statement that Treasury plans to offer $62 billion in notes and bonds next week, raising approximately $17 billion in new cash.
The contingency test was part of regular auction infrastructure testing, Rollins said.
The Treasury official who briefed reporters separately said the test would gauge the government’s ability to borrow money if a cyber attack disrupted normal auctions.
On future coupon sizes, Rollins said the department “will continue to monitor projected financing needs and make appropriate adjustments as necessary.”
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Paul Simao)
The nation’s largest Christian-focused retailer will likely stay open if a bid at a private auction for their assets is approved in bankruptcy court.
FC Acquisition, controlled by an Atlanta businessman who also controls the non-profit company that owns Family Christian Stores, submitted the highest bid and will pay up to $43.6 million dollars for the company’s assets.
Other bidders had planned to liquidate the company and close the stores.
The second-highest bidder plans to challenge the FC Acquisitions bid, claiming their bid was at least $15 million higher than the FC bid.
Richard Jackson, operator of FC Acquisition, explained to the Christian Post in March why he was taking this step.
“We are gonna lose millions of dollars ourselves, all we did was loan money to the parent and its out,” said Jackson to CP. “It’s gone, and we don’t get interest. So we can either quit, [file a] Chapter 7, which means all stores go out of business immediately, or [do] a reorganization called a 363 sell, which is where Family Christian Ministries forms a new entity to buy assets and it cleans out any other debts and so forth, positioning to be successful going forth.”
Family Christian Stores filed for bankruptcy in February.
