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The founder of Bang Energy deleted Instagram comments disparaging advisers trying to sell the bankrupt energy drink maker after a judge said he would be fined $25,000 a day until he removed the posts, Bloomberg News reported. Jack Owoc, who was fired as Bang Energy chief executive officer last month, removed several Instagram comments criticizing company advisers after Bankruptcy Judge Peter Russin held him in contempt of court and ruled the posts violated a March order prohibiting him and his wife, Meg, from posting on Bang Energy-affiliated Instagram, TikTok and Twitter accounts unless told to do so by company advisers. Owoc made the comments under posts promoting the energy drink from a @BangEnergy.CEO Instagram account with 1 million followers. Company lawyers requested Owoc make the Instagram posts earlier this month and took the founder to court over the subsequent comments he made under the posts. “I (JACK OWOC) WAS FORCED BY THREAT TO POST THIS AGAINST MY WILL,” one comment under an April 10 post read. “THE FLORIDA BANKRUPTCY COMMUNITY MUST BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE!” In another comment, Owoc wrote, “This post is a fraud on the American public. This post was made against my will and is a violation of my first amendment rights.” About 30 minutes before a 5 p.m. deadline imposed by Judge Russin to delete the comments, Owoc said in an email that he would follow the court’s instructions. The comments disappeared shortly thereafter.

A federal judge refused on Friday to recuse himself from the New Orleans Roman Catholic bankruptcy after an Associated Press report that he donated tens of thousands of dollars to archdiocese charities and consistently ruled in favor of the church in the contentious case involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims. U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry told attorneys in the high-profile case that a panel of federal judges he asked to review the possible conflict determined no “reasonable person” would question his impartiality despite his contributions and longstanding ties to the archdiocese. Judge Guidry read from the opinion of the Washington-based Committee on Codes of Conduct, which noted that none of the charities he donated to “has been or is an actual party” in the bankruptcy and that Judge Guidry’s eight years on the board of the archdiocese’s charitable arm ended more than a decade before the bankruptcy. “Based upon that advice and based upon my certainty that I can be fair and impartial, I have decided not to recuse myself,” said Guidry, who oversees the bankruptcy in an appellate role.

U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry abruptly convened attorneys on a call last week to tell them his charitable giving to the New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese “has been brought to my attention” and he is now considering recusal from the high-profile bankruptcy he oversees in an appellate role, the Associated Press reported. “Naturally,” Judge Guidry told them, “I will take no further action in this case until this question has been resolved.” AP’s review of campaign-finance records found that Guidry, since being nominated to the federal bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump, has given nearly $50,000 to local Catholic charities from leftover contributions he received after serving 10 years as a Louisiana Supreme Court justice. Most of that giving, $36,000 of it, came in the months after the archdiocese sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2020 amid a crush of sexual abuse lawsuits. That included a $12,000 donation to the archdiocese's Catholic Community Foundation in September 2020 on the same day of a series of filings in the bankruptcy, and a $14,000 donation to the same charity in July of the following year.