The Sandy Hook families have agreed to reduce the amount they are owed in the settlement in order to make up the difference between The Onion and the highest bidder. This allows other creditors to end up getting paid more despite The Onion's bid being less because the families are taking less of a cut.

So it's not The Onion paying more money, it's the families taking less, and the families aren't doing this for the money.

Nobody wants to spend much money on it. That's why the Onion will win the auction, they can use $965 million of Alex Jones's own debt, courtesy the Sandy Hook families, to pay for it.

Not kill it, but invert the messages it sends.

Because there remains an unanswered question: what small cut some other folks are going to get.

The only way to answer that is with an auction. Just like in the above analogy, the only way to determine your eBay fees is to actually have an eBay auction.

And they did have an auction, but the presiding judge didn't like the auction rules. They can change the rules and thus change the cut, but the winners won't change.