It sure must be handy to be able to lead a billionaire around by his dick. Elon Musk is using his wealth to stop a result Trump doesn’t like.
Last week, satirical news website The Onion announced acquiring InfoWars in a court-ordered sale.
Subsequently, Musk-owned social media platform X “entered an appearance” – a legal term expressing the intention to take part in proceedings – asking the federal court that it be included on any future communications about the case.
As a result, a federal bankruptcy judge temporarily halted the transfer of InfoWars to The Onion while ordering an “evidentiary hearing” to review the auction process aimed at ensuring the “process and transparency”.
Judge Christopher Lopez of Texas Southern District warned people against feeling “comfortable with the results of the auction” until the evidentiary hearing takes place next week.
On the one hand, The Onion CEO Ben Collins is insisting that his company has won the bid fair and square and that the only thing pending was “standard processes”. Collins plans to relaunch InfoWars as a “satirised version of itself” in January.
On the other hand, Jones, who is a vocal Trump supporter, has hailed the court’s review order. “The cavalry is here. Trump is pissed,” he said, implying that the president-elect is unhappy with the court-ordered sale of a news platform that has consistently supported the 45th US president.
So many questions. Why did a judge decide to include an unrelated third party in the proceedings? What gives Trump the right to interfere? Why is Musk doing the bidding of Trump? Why did they bother to have an auction if some random asshole can swoop in and invalidate the results?
Because our country is for sale. Once the courts are bought law and order becomes law by order.
Of course Musk is going to buy his way in. Of course Alex Jones will get a pass. Of course the Sandy Hook parents will get stiffed … again.
We are entering the Russian Model era. Oligarchies at the top, criminals running things and we the people at the bottom. Oh, wait, packs of dogs THEN us.
It is open corruption.
Get used to it.
The Rule of Law is over with for the next 4 years.
Better question: why are we letting a handful of people do whatever the fuck they want without any consequences, including enacting policies that will lead to mass suffering and death, and then complaining that an abstract, intangible entity like “the law” isn’t doing anything or meaning anything to people? Will enough people ever understand that they will only stop the same way Nazis and other fascists have always been?
The chaos and money driven corruption increases dramatically. How much more of this ‘rot at the top’ must occur before nothing decent and honest and caring has a chance to succeed in this society? Anyone who uses the phrase ‘nation of law and order’ should be laughed out of town. We are getting very close to the point where we should declare this country moribund and organize local ‘underground’ community benefit organizations that discard, condemn and withhold all support of the billionaires, banksters, RNC, DNC and rtwingnut xtian terrorist cults.
We will continue to work to enlighten even in these New Dark Ages.
Imagine that the auction went through the process and when the results didn’t satisfy Trump, they used their influence (money) to get a do-over.
Again, procedural comments and not legal advice:
First of all, the outside OP’s post hoc reasoning is blatantly unsupported. The debtor’s (InfoWars’) own objection caused the need for an evidentiary hearing. As soon as the bankruptcy judge heard enough to say “I need to hear from the Trustee and administrator and establish facts concerning the debtor/bidder’s allegations,” that hearing was going to be necessary. It had nothing to do with whether X was “being notified”…
…because that’s the right of every creditor. InfoWars probably owed X money (even if just a “certified n/u/t/c/a/s/e/ blue-check-mark” fee). Even if there’s no formal debtor-creditor relationship, darned near anyone can request notification of events from the bankruptcy court — it’s routine. I’ve done so at least two dozen times on behalf of IP licensors when a licensee declares bankruptcy, even though none of the prior court filings named my clients.
In short, the outside OP reflects almost complete ignorance of bankruptcy procedure. (Which isn’t that surprising, as it’s rather arcane — but is no basis for drawing dire conclusions.)
@2 raven said, “The Rule of Law is over with for the next 4 years.” I see no reason to hope this is over in 4 years, or even when Herr Trumpf dies.
PZ should love this: evolution, squids .
I think all of you will, too, even though it is off topic
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1731947549-20241118.png
Can’t vouch for accuracy of this article but it paints a very different picture of what is going on: https://www.lawandchaospod.com/p/no-elon-musk-isnt-riding-to-alex
@ 9
Jesus… That creep Torrez is still being allowed to write?!
In a just world, this would open up Musk to the unpaid liability…
But this is America and Musk will give it to a newly formed corporation with unknown owners who just happen to contract with Alex Jones to do a show…
The US (un)justice system has been a joke for a long time. I keep saying the biggest condemnation of the US justice system is that Trump wasn’t in jail BEFORE he became president the first time, not that he is not in jail for what he did immediately before, during and after his presidency. The system is open to exploitation by moneyed interests and is hopelessly politicised. (The reason it is politicised is because the Legislature is broken, so the only way to enact change is through the courts.)
Latest headline, OT but not by much.
This is BTW, incredibly illegal.
It is illegal for the US military to be used within the USA for law enforcement purposes. It’s called the Posse Comitatus Act.
This is a banana republic class dictatorship move.
A government that uses its own army against its own citizens isn’t a democracy any more.
But we already saw where everything is going.
raven, this is not a new consideration, and it may be technically legal.
cf. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trumps-insurrection-act-threat
@13 Raven – The SC actually has declared that any official act is immune from prosecution – can only lead to impeachment, which it is pretty obvious is not possible. So it is effectively legal for the president to order the military into whatever operation he desires. Of course members of the military are not immune should they follow any illegal orders. On the other hand, the chance of any charges ever being laid is between 0 and 0, so the act is effectively null and void.
Raven and Morales, you’re talking about two different laws with different prohibitions and enablements.†
• Raven correctly raises the Posse Comitatus Act, regarding use of US military forces (originally, when passed in the 19th century, just the Army; finally updated to include the Air Force and Navy only a few years ago) in enforcement of civilian law against civilians within the United States or its territories. Not just against citizens.
• Morales correctly raises the Insurrection Act of 1798 (yes, really) which — primarily because it has been so seldom invoked — hasn’t gotten the same attention or disdain from the courts as its companion, the Alien and Sedition Act. The problem is “when is it insurrection and when is it merely law enforcement against civil disorder?” The second-order problem — and the one that is really at issue here — is “who decides?” The problem is that its mechanism is identical to that in the Alien and Sedition Act… which has been declared unconstitutional more times than Obama was incorrectly called a “liberal.”
The “interesting question” is whether Posse Comitatus limits or overrules the Insurrection Act (which Our Once-and-Future Dear Leader is very fond of invoking, although I’d be shocked if he’d ever read it… or even had it recited to him, it’s not very long). It’s such an interesting question that cadets, lieutenants and ensigns, and lieutenants and captains have been struggling with it in various training exercises and classroom problems for half a century. See, e.g., Calley v. Calloway, 382 F.Supp. 650 (M.D. Ga. 1974).‡ Hint: There isn’t a universally applicable answer that does not depend on both the particular facts and the responsible officer’s judgment. (That judgment — more than ensuring training, more than leadership, more than anything else — is what officers are there for.)
† Remember the “War on Drugs”? I’ve got decades of unwanted experience with these problems… long before law school.
‡ Cited for the principle, without regard to the accuracy-viewed-now of the description of the underlying incidents.
Laws? Who cares about pesky laws?
Presidential immunity for official acts, as determined by the SC, no?
The point of my citation to Calley is that the President’s immunity for official acts doesn’t matter to the officer on the spot. The officer on the spot is obligated to not obey an unlawful order, even if the individual who gave the order can face no consequences for that order.
That’s where the FUN† will begin, because — under the Uniform Code of Military Justice as it stands — despite being the Commander in Chief, the President is not subject to the UCMJ… and therefore cannot prefer charges under the UCMJ. He can jump up and down and scream and x-ify until his fingers fall off, but he can’t start a court martial unless a uniformed military officer in the chain of command agrees to do so. Whether The Orange One actually can do as he has threated and fire all the generals and admirals who won’t pledge personal loyalty to him (contra 5 U.S.C. § 3331) is going to make this even more amusing to those of us with dark senses of humor — especially if we know who, umm, “provided” any of the skeletons in the closet…
† Traditional military acronym for Fouled-Up Nonsense, or something that sounds like that.
Jaws, yes.
But, you know… “So, it has come to this!” :|
[BTW (I shan’t link but easy enough to verify) David Brin thinks a lot of what’s going on is due to kompromat.]
Trump seems like he should be immune to kompromat, given how he’s been elected repeatedly despite people knowing quite a lot of terrible stuff he’s done.
@21,
“given how he’s been elected repeatedly despite people knowing quite a lot of terrible stuff he’s done.”
The problem is not that he got elected again, it’s that he was allowed to run after committing an insurrection.
The topic was kompromat. It seems irrelevant, even before Trump committed an insurrection.
As he himself put it, he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and wouldn’t lose a single voter (except the one he shot, I guess). So why would kompromat matter? He paid off Stormy Daniels before he realized that he was immune.
numerobis, not Trump, but his enablers.
“Remember Madison Cawthorn, the rising young Republican star Congressmember, who was suddenly dumped by the GOP, for revealing ‘orgies’ amid upper ranks of the party? That huge over-reaction – destroying him for offhand (and likely stoned) remarks on shock radio – reflected almost-certain desperation to silence truth; otherwise he’d a got a slap on the wrist.
But was it true? I’ve long posited that the behavior of so many top GOPpers – e.g. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz – can only be explained by blackmail. Mere corruption is insufficient, because any merely-corrupt official can say ‘that’s enough bribery for this year; if I keep saying more shit, I’ll look suspicious or insane.’
Blackmail, on the other hand, is insatiable. You simply keep doing whatever the blackmailer demands, even if it makes you look like an idiot, or hypocrite, or both, as in the multiple times when Graham tried to say “I’m done with Trump!” hoping that it would end his ongoing humiliation… followed the next day by utter groveling. “
You cannot change a corrupted system from within that system, obeying its rules.
DanDare, are you channeling Gödel’s incompleteness theorems?
If so, I note that democracy is the only system that can vote itself out of existence by popular demand.
I mean, Trump was democratically voted into power.
We’ll see how robust that democracy is.
(I really don’t want to be in a position to analyse why it was not sufficiently so that it survived)
—
I’ve already noted how it has come to this.
(I’m dead serious; when it comes to individuals being ethical to their own detriment, it’s a bit of a worry, no?)
The funniest possible outcome of this would be that The Onion bid up the price and then drop out, and Elon Musk ends up buying Infowars for a grossly over-inflated price, which then ends up going to the Sandy Hook families.