The satirical news site intends to turn Infowars into a parody of itself. But the court overseeing the bankruptcy put a hold on the sale pending a hearing next week.
The Onion, a satirical publication that skewers newsmakers and current events, said on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars, a website founded and operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But in a twist all too typical of six years of often-chaotic litigation, within hours the bankruptcy judge temporarily halted the deal.
The Onion said its bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.
A lawyer for the Onion said the deal was secure. But during an emergency hearing hours after a triumphant announcement, Judge Christopher Lopez of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston put a hold on the sale until a hearing early next week.
Judge Lopez cited concerns about a lack of transparency in the secret bidding process and a need to clarify which assets the winners are buying. One of the assets in dispute is Mr. Jones’s account on X.
The auction drew only two bidders. Walter J. Cicack, a Houston lawyer representing First United American Companies, a business associated with an online supplement store that bears Mr. Jones’s name, bid $3.5 million in cash for Infowars’ website, related websites and Infowars’ lucrative supplements business. In the Houston hearing, Mr. Cicack said the court-appointed trustee who managed the sale had informed him that he was the “backup bidder” and had lost. But he was not given an opportunity to increase his bid and was not told the amount of the winning bid, he said.
The Onion group did not release the terms of the sale, but in the hearing it emerged that it had offered less in cash than First United. It won by including a “credit bid,” a pledge by Sandy Hook families who had sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut to forgo for now collecting on a portion of the damages due them.
While Judge Lopez said he was not accusing the parties of doing anything improper, “I’m concerned about the process.” He scolded the trustee, saying the backup bidders “don’t even know the winning bid!”
In the hearing, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, Vickie Driver, said the Infowars website had been shut down and the trustee had begun securing the property.
Families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators, sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut Superior Court in 2018 after he spread the baseless claim that the rampage was a fabricated pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms.
Most of the families greeted The Onion’s potential takeover of an outlet that has caused them so much torment as a tactical triumph with an added bonus: It would irk Mr. Jones to no end.
“We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” Mr. Collins said. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.”
The Onion said in a tongue-in-cheek story that the site had cost “less than a trillion dollars.” (The article added that all of the diet supplements would be melted down “into a single candy bar-sized omnivitamin.”)
Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence that was founded in the aftermath of the shooting, would advertise on a relaunched version of the site under The Onion. Mr. Collins declined to disclose the value of the advertising deal but said it was a multiyear agreement that would include banner advertisements and sponsored articles on the site, which would be redesigned to fit its new editorial direction.
The Onion purchase — backed by a wealthy gun control group and brokered by a Connecticut law firm steeped in Democratic politics — seems destined to fuel claims by Mr. Jones and his listeners that the lawsuits are the work of a “deep state” cabal set on taking him down.
Mr. Jones, whose lawyer did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has stoked drama around the auction, promoting “Save Infowars” discounts on the diet supplements and survival gear that have powered his business, calling on Elon Musk to enter the bidding and insisting that agents for hostile buyers had arrived at the door of his operation in Austin, Texas.
It is not likely that a takeover by The Onion would silence Mr. Jones. Over six years of litigation, he and his allies have worked to keep his income out of the families’ reach. He and his father, David Jones, have set up separate companies to scoop up profits from merchandise sales, and to alternate channels for his broadcast. The elder Mr. Jones runs a parallel supplements business, Dr. Jones’ Naturals, that his son promoted on Infowars, while emphasizing it is not owned by him. Mr. Jones routinely insists that far-right backers are waiting to finance a comeback, should he lose his perch.
“Everything in this process — just like Trump being targeted by lawfare — has been as phony as a three-dollar bill,” Mr. Jones said on his website after the close of the auction on Wednesday, using the same comparison he deployed in denying the Sandy Hook shooting. At the end of his update, he promoted his new sales channels, adding, “Everything will continue, thanks to listener support.”
As the bankruptcy played out, lawyers for the families discovered that Mr. Jones’s assets were worth only a tiny fraction of what they had estimated when they sued him. His personal and business assets, including Infowars’ production studio and the diet supplement business, were valued in court before the auction at roughly $9 million combined; additional Infowars equipment, real estate, guns and other personal property belonging to Mr. Jones remains to be sold.
Divided equally among the families, sale of all $9 million in assets would net less than $500,000 each, an amount that could dwindle by up to one-quarter, because Mr. Jones’s substantial legal bills must be paid first. There is potentially more money if the families can claim ongoing revenue from Free Speech Systems, as a previous court order allows them to do.
“By divesting Jones of Infowars’ assets, the families and the team at The Onion have done a public service and will meaningfully hinder Jones’s ability to do more harm,” Mr. Mattei said.
Mr. Collins said The Onion began contemplating a bid for Infowars this summer, when he read online that it was going to be auctioned off. The publication’s leadership team saw an opportunity to play a very funny, very public joke on Mr. Jones if things broke its way.
In early fall, Mr. Collins reached out to the lawyers for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, whom he knew from his days as a reporter covering misinformation at NBC News. The families expressed support for The Onion’s bid, Mr. Collins said.
“The dissolution of Alex Jones’s assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, said Thursday in a statement.
Mr. Collins declined to provide financial details for The Onion, which is privately held, but he said that the company’s relaunched print edition had garnered “an arena” full of subscribers, helping finance the company’s bid for Infowars. Global Tetrahedron is backed by Jeff Lawson, a co-founder of the tech company Twilio.
Mr. Collins said the families of the victims were supportive of The Onion’s bid because it would put an end to Mr. Jones’s control over the site, which has been a fount of misinformation for years. He said they were also supportive of using humor as a tool for raising awareness about gun violence in America.
“They’re all human beings with senses of humor who want fun things to happen and want good things to take place in their lives,” Mr. Collins said. “They want to be part of something good and positive too.”
