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Judge rejects bankruptcy sale of Alex Jones’ Infowars to The Onion
A federal judge on Tuesday night rejected the sale of the conspiracy platform Infowars to The Onion satirical news outlet after Alex Jones claimed that a recent bankruptcy auction was fraught with illegal collusion.
The Onion was named the winning bidder on Nov. 14 over a company affiliated with Jones. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez’s decision means Jones can stay at Infowars in Austin, Texas. The Onion had planned to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January as a parody.
At the end of a lengthy two-day hearing in a Texas courtroom, Lopez criticized the auction process as flawed and said the outcome “left a lot of money on the table” for families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
“You got to scratch and claw and get everything you can for them,” Lopez said.
Lopez cited problems — but no wrongdoing — with the auction process.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, a spokesperson for the social media giant confirmed to CBS News Wednesday night.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The move comes two weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Florida and dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
At the time, Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News that Zuckerberg had “made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership.”
Trump was removed from Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol when it determined that his posts had potentially encouraged the violence that occurred that day.
The company restored his account in early 2023, but with certain “guardrails.” In July, those restrictions were lifted by Meta.
Trump has a combined 65 million followers on Facebook and Instagram.
In August, Zuckerberg submitted a letter to Congress claiming that the Biden administration in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.” He called “the government pressure wrong” and said he would push back against any similar efforts in the future.
Silicon Valley has been uneasy about the kind of the treatment it may get from a second Trump administration, and the donation may signal an attempt by Zuckerberg to thaw those tensions.
Trump’s choice of Brendan Carr, a prominent critic of big tech, to lead the Federal Communications Commission has potentially heightened those concerns.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment on the donation.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he has tapped Kari Lake as director of the government-funded Voice of America, the nation’s largest international broadcaster.
The move comes after the 55-year-old Lake lost her Arizona Senate bid to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in November.
“She will be appointed by, and work closely with, our next head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who I will announce soon,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform.
Lake, a former longtime TV news anchor in Phoenix, is a fierce Trump loyalist who also lost her campaign for Arizona governor in 2022. During her campaigns, she often echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Voice of America, which is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, broadcasts news internationally in 49 languages on radio, television and online to an audience of an estimated 354 million people per week, according to its website.
It has about 2,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $260 million.
Lake’s appointment must still be confirmed by the Senate.
During Trump’s first term in 2020, USAGM’s editorial independence came into question after Trump named Michael Pack — a conservative filmmaker and close ally of one-time Trump adviser Steve Bannon — its CEO.
Pack subsequently made the decision not to renew the visas of 10 VOA journalists and dozens of others who work at networks under USAGM, increasing concerns by members of Congress and the international community alike over the potential of diminished editorial independence of the VOA news outlet.
John Lippman is currently the acting director of VOA, a post he’s held since October 2023, while Amanda Bennett is CEO of USAGM.
contributed to this report.
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