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AUSTIN (AP) —The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones ’ Infowars platform is under review by a federal bankruptcy judge after Jones and his lawyers complained about how an auction was conducted.

The satirical news outlet was announced as the winning bidder on Thursday in an auction that is part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy. Hours later, Infowars headquarters in Austin, Texas and its websites were shut down and Jones was broadcasting from a new studio he had set up before the bankruptcy auction. By Friday morning, Infowars and its websites were back up and running for reasons that were not entirely clear.

At a hastily called court hearing in Houston on Thursday, Judge Christopher Lopez ordered another hearing to be held next week. He wants to know what happened with the auction and how the bankruptcy trustee chose The Onion over the only other bidder — a company affiliated with a Jones product-selling website.

A court hearing is typically held after a bankruptcy auction to finalize the winning bids and sales, and to hear any objections, so the process in Jones’ case hasn’t strayed far from the usual — yet.

Here’s a look at the bankruptcy auction and what could happen next:
Why was Infowars up for auction?

Jones declared personal bankruptcy in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut who sued him for defamation for repeatedly calling the massacre a hoax aimed at increasing gun control.

Relatives of some of the 20 first graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 shooting said Jones’ followers harassed and threatened them as a result of his lies. Jones has since acknowledged the shooting was “100% real.”

As part of the bankruptcy, Jones’ personal assets and Infowars’ parent company, the Jones-owned Free Speech Systems, were to be sold at auction, with the Sandy Hook families and Jones’ other creditors getting the proceeds.
How The Onion was named the winning bidder

The bankruptcy trustee overseeing the sale chose from sealed bids. He received two.

One was from the Jones-affiliated First United American Companies, which offered $3.5 million, the trustee revealed in court Thursday. The other, from The Onion, was lower but contained an incentive by some of the Sandy Hook families to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds and give it to other Jones’ creditors, the trustee, Christopher Murray, said.

Murray said he determined The Onion’s offer, although unusual, was better overall, because it would provide more money to Jones’ creditors than the other bid. But he also said he could not yet put a dollar figure on The Onion’s bid when the families’ offer was factored in.

Judge Lopez indicated that he had expected prospective buyers would be given a chance to outbid each other after the bids were unsealed.

His 20-page order on the sale procedures in September, however, made such a bidding round optional. And it gave broad authority to Murray to conduct the sale, including the power to reject any bid, no matter how high, that was “contrary to the best interests” of Jones, his company and their creditors.
Infowars reopens after shutting down

Murray had Infowars’ website and studio shut down Thursday as he began the process of securing assets, a lawyer for the trustee said in court Thursday. But on Friday, Infowars and its websites were back up and running.

On his show, Jones told listeners that Murray had told him it was wrong to shut down Infowars before the sale was finalized. Murray and his lawyer did not immediately return phone messages and emails seeking comment.
What’s next in court?

The judge said he had concerns about the auction process and transparency. Both sides are expected to present evidence at next week’s hearing.

Jones and a lawyer for First United American Companies allege Murray improperly selected The Onion’s bid and unexpectedly changed the sale process Monday after the sealed bids were submitted, by deciding not to hold a round of bidding on Wednesday. They also questioned the legality of The Onion’s bid.

Murray said denied doing anything improper and said he followed the judge’s auction rules.

Lopez would rule on whether the trustee properly ran the auction and selected The Onion as the winning bidder. If not, the possibilities include reopening the sale and holding an auction where potential buyers could outbid each other. The judge has the ultimate authority to accept or reject any sale of Infowars.

An exact date for the hearing had not yet been scheduled by Friday afternoon.
What are The Onion’s plans for Infowars?

The Onion — which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead — was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture. It hopes to reopen the Infowars website in January as a parody of Jones and other conspiracy theorists.

“Our goal in a couple of years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website that exists,” Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO, told The Associated Press. “It was previously the dumbest website that exists.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man charged with trying to provide material support to the Islamic State group and planning violent attacks in Houston appeared in federal court Thursday.

Anas Said is accused of offering his home as a safe sanctuary for members of ISIS and saying he wants to take part in a terrorist attack like 9/11, according to court records. Federal prosecutors allege Said had spent time planning and discussing committing attacks in Houston, where he lived, and had used the internet to research how to make explosives and use cellphones as remote detonators.

“He has created videos extolling the ‘virtue’ of ISIS, the violence and death brought by ISIS, and the need for the terror perpetrated by ISIS to continue,” according to court documents. “He is dedicated to his mission to provide material support to ISIS in whatever form that may take.”

Said, 28, was arrested last week and on Thursday pleaded not guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Said, who authorities said was born in Houston but spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, will remain in federal custody.

Said has been on the FBI’s radar since 2017, said Douglas Williams Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI’s Houston office.

“To those wannabe terrorists who believe they can hide behind encrypted apps or anonymous social media profiles, please understand that we will find you and we will hold you to account,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani.

Baldemar Zuniga, Said’s attorney, said in a statement that the allegations against his client revolve around providing support to ISIS only through videos and propaganda.

“Despite allegations that my client made statements to government agents regarding proposed terrorist acts, the indictment does not currently allege any planning, or acts of terrorism. This appears to be a lengthy investigation and it will take some time to sift through all of the evidence,” Zuniga said.

If convicted, Said faces up to 20 years in federal prison.

HOUSTON (AP) – A surprise pitch from a Chicago company with no experience building offshore wind farms has reignited enthusiasm for wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hecate Energy, a company best known for land-based solar projects, presented its plan to build a 133-turbine wind farm in the Gulf shortly after the Biden administration canceled the region’s second lease auction in July due to insufficient interest from bidders. The failed auction came on the heels of the Gulf’s disappointing first-ever auction in 2023, which drew just one successful bid, submitted by German wind energy giant RWE, for a tract south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and no bids for two areas near Galveston, Texas.

The Gulf’s offshore wind industry “could use a positive headline,” Hecate wrote in its application to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency in charge of offshore wind development in federal waters. By proceeding with Hecate’s application, BOEM could “generate momentum” in a region overlooked by offshore wind developers, the application said.

Hecate’s gambit appears to be paying off. Invenergy, another Chicago energy company, recently threw down a proposal for roughly the same two areas of the western Gulf, about 25 miles from Galveston. In an “Indication of Interest” letter sent to the BOEM in September, Invenergy proposed up to 140 turbines with a total capacity of about 2,500 megawatts, enough to power about a half-million homes. Hecate’s more modest plan would likely produce approximately 2,000 megawatts.

Suddenly, the Gulf is back in play, said Cameron Poole, energy and innovation manager for the economic development organization Greater New Orleans, Inc. While the Gulf has stronger storms and fewer potential energy customers than the East Coast, which has been the focus of U.S. offshore wind development, “these new proposals show that developers aren’t scared away by that,” Poole said. “It shows that interest is still growing in the Gulf.”

BOEM is waiting to see if more companies propose projects for the two areas, which total about 142,000 acres. The areas differ from the ones BOEM planned to auction in July, but the agency had identified them as suitable for offshore wind development in 2021. BOEM will likely initiate a competitive lease sale but no timeline has been set, a BOEM spokesperson said this week.

“The interest from industry leaders such as Hecate and RWE demonstrates the commercial potential in the region,” said James Kendall, BOEM’s Gulf region director.

Founded in 2012, Hecate has developed more than 47 solar and energy storage projects in the U.S. and Canada and a wind farm in Jordan. Its minority investor, Repsol, is an oil and gas company with offshore extraction rights in the Gulf and off the Alaska coast.

Invenergy has 74 solar and energy storage projects and 118 land-based wind projects in North America, Europe and Japan. The 23-year-old company is developing offshore wind projects off the New Jersey and California coasts.
Betting on the Gulf

While lagging behind the East Coast, the Gulf has the potential to be a wind energy powerhouse. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory determined the Gulf could generate more than 500,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy per year. That’s twice the energy needs of all five Gulf Coast states, and larger than the potential offshore wind capacity of the Great Lakes and Pacific Coast combined.

An initial flurry of interest in the Gulf from some of the world’s biggest offshore wind developers has waned as the industry’s overall growth in the U.S. cooled in recent years. The reasons are varied: supply chain delays, high interest rates, rising inflation and a lack of trained workers.

Louisiana and Texas have already capitalized on the offshore wind industry even if no turbine blades are spinning over the Gulf.

Louisiana firms with close ties to the offshore oil and gas industry have played key roles in the wind industry for nearly a decade. Six Bayou State companies supplied designers, engineers, ship operators, and other workers to build the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project off Rhode Island, in 2016.

About a quarter of all offshore wind industry contracts in the U.S. have gone to Gulf-based firms, with about $1 billion in investments flowing to the region’s ship and metal fabrication yards in recent years, according to the Oceantic Network, an industry trade group.

Louisiana has approved agreements with two companies to build small-scale wind farms in state-managed waters near Cameron Parish, in the southwest corner of the state, and Port Fourchon, the Gulf’s largest oil and gas port.
Texas political winds

RWE, the Gulf’s only lease-holder in federal waters, had lobbied regulators to boost leasing opportunities near Louisiana because it was the only state in the Gulf “that has signaled its interest in pursuing offshore wind policy,” the company said in a letter to BOEM.

Texas has stronger wind speeds, but its leaders have expressed strong opposition to offshore wind development. The Texas Legislature threatened to block wind farms from linking to the state’s power grid and hit companies with fines if they failed to meet energy generation goals. Just before last year’s auction, the Texas land commissioner pledged to do “everything in my power … to thwart this proposed boondoggle,” calling wind farms an impediment to shipping and fishing.

While the state of Texas may appear hostile to offshore wind, its cities are offering a warm welcome. Hecate’s application notes that Texas’ four largest cities – Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin – have adopted climate action plans that commit to a goal of net zero emissions by 2050. The four cities offer a combined customer base of about 6 million people.

The market for offshore wind power isn’t limited to cities. Hecate indicated it could steer its wind energy to oil and gas companies keen on making their extraction and refining processes a touch greener. The company would also likely tap into the growing market for “green” hydrogen, a fuel made by using wind or solar energy to split water’s molecules. Unlike coal or gas, hydrogen doesn’t produce greenhouse gases when it’s burned.

Federal and state grants are pouring into green hydrogen projects. The Biden administration and Louisiana have awarded about $75 million to develop interrelated green hydrogen initiatives in south Louisiana. A $426 million green hydrogen plant planned in Ascension Parish, about 50 miles west of New Orleans, is also tapping into government grants. Hecate cited the two projects as evidence of a robust developing market for its proposed project and other offshore wind farms.

“It’s a thin landscape right now with three wind developments in the Gulf,” said Poole, referring to the large RWE lease and the two smaller projects envisioned in Louisiana waters. “But we remain optimistic about offshore wind. It’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”