A US trustee overseeing Infowars host Alex Jones’ bankruptcy appears to have committed bankruptcy fraud by colluding with bidders in a recent auction, according to constitutional attorney Robert Barnes.
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show Tuesday, Barnes, a longtime guest and former Jones attorney, gave his analysis on recent developments involving last month’s Infowars auction, which satire publication The Onion claimed to have won — before a US bankruptcy judge halted the sale citing concerns over process and transparency.
Constitutional Attorney Argues US Trustee Committed Bankruptcy Fraud in Infowars Auction 'Cut and Dried' – https://t.co/cbaIgUqACY pic.twitter.com/IGIzhOekYA
— Adan Salazar (@AdanSalazarWins) December 4, 2024
“Oh, you mean…the bankruptcy fraud the US trustee appears to be complicit in?” Barnes began. “I mean, this is one of the most outrageous lawfare scams out of all of this, which is really impressive.”
Asked his thoughts on apparent efforts to change the auction rules without informing other bidding parties, in addition to the trustee deactivating “Infowars.com” the day after the auction took place without a court order, Barnes said, “I mean, it’s bankruptcy fraud. That’s what they did. If private participants had done it by themselves, they would call what happened: bankruptcy fraud.”
“They attempted to go into bankruptcy court and steal an asset for far less than it was worth. Steal it from other auctioneers, deprive them of due process, deprive the debtor of due process, in order to shut down the company, in order to deprive plaintiffs of any monetary recovery. At every level, this was a censorship operation.
“But the problem is bankruptcy law doesn’t allow that, so they had to violate bankruptcy law to do it. And that’s what they did…And so to me, it looks like bankruptcy fraud. It looks like an insider deal, an insider auction,” Barnes stated.
Jones went on to explain that his lawyers, who are currently suing his court-appointed trustee, were stunned by the actions and had never pursued such a case, with them telling Jones it was definitely fraud.
“Well, it is. It is cut and dried,” Barnes responded. “I mean, because what took place here is you’re supposed to do an honest auction where the whole purpose and objective of the honest auction is to be able to maximize value to the estate. That’s the point of bankruptcy law. So you’re looking, ‘Okay, how can we maximize value?'”
“Well, it’s been obvious from day one, there’s only one way to maximize value to the estate, and that’s maximize the value of Alex Jones, and that’s keep Alex Jones on the air, that’s have Alex Jones available to as many people anywhere in the world because the more people that see you, the more people that hear you, the more people that like to listen to you, and the more people that engage.”
Barnes went on to say The Onion’s supposedly winning bid of $1.75 million severely undercuts the plaintiffs’ previous arguments that Infowars was worth tens of millions of dollars, as they attempted to claim in court.
“I mean, the same people that put that evidence up helped coordinate, it appears to me, as an independent third-party observer, an inside effort to suddenly say, ‘You know what? When we told the court and the jury Infowars is worth a quarter of a billion, we knew we were lying. It’s really worth zero,’ because that’s effectively what their auction bid was, as far as I can tell,” he said.
“You can’t claim the business is worth a quarter of a billion dollars according to your expert testimony, and then submit an expert bid that says it’s worth zero.”
“It looks to me like it was that they said, ‘We’re going to use Alex Jones’ future revenue to fund our offer, even though we’re going to preclude Alex Jones from making any future revenue — because our goal is to shut it down,'” Barnes stated.
The high-profile attorney went on to point out the paltry “winning bid” amount calls into question both judgements against Jones in Texas and Connecticut.
“I mean, this is fraud. This is fraud of the bankruptcy court. In my view, it means there was fraud on the Austin jury. It means there was fraud in the Connecticut jury, fraud on…both Austin and Connecticut courts because what they have said contradicted each other,” Barnes highlighted.
“And here, the bankruptcy trustee is being complicit in what is really a no-bid sale. It’s like an old-school mob sale…like the mob comes in and bids on a project and they make sure nobody else makes any other competitive bids. I mean, it’s bid rigging. That’s exactly what it is, bid rigging, which is directly a violation of federal law, bankruptcy law, state law. You name it.”
US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez will hold his next hearing investigating the auction on Dec. 9.