The satirical news site The Onion was named the winning bidder for Infowars, the former home of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
The bid, announced Thursday, was backed by the Connecticut families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, who won a $1.4 billion defamation verdict against Jones in 2022 after he called the shooting a hoax. But the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case said Thursday that he had concerns about how the auction was conducted and ordered a hearing for next week after complaints by lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a $3.5 million bid.
Sandy Hook family members praised the sale Thursday afternoon. Robbie Parker's daughter, 6-year-old Emilie, was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
"Before we even buried Emilie, I was already receiving death threats from Alex Jones followers," Parker said in an interview Thursday. "What Alex Jones did ... defiled Emily's memory and immediately started to steal our ability to grieve individually and as a family."
The purchase turns over Jones’ company, which for decades has peddled in conspiracy and misinformation, to a humor website that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody.
"We have the most notorious conspiracy theorist being taken down by the most notorious satire outlet that there is," Parker said. "Both of those entities are on opposite ends of the spectrum of where truth lies."
"But in all of this — it is about highlighting that truth. And my story is about reclaiming that truth," Parker said.
Within hours of the sale’s announcement Thursday, Infowars’ website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.
But by Friday morning, Infowars and its websites were back up and running for reasons that were not entirely clear. On his show, Jones told listeners that the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the sale had told him it was wrong to shut down Infowars before the sale was finalized.
Purchase involves partnership with gun violence prevention group
The Onion’s bid allows the site to take control of Infowars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory. The bid also acquired certain social media accounts and production equipment used to put Jones on the air.
The sale price was not immediately disclosed.
The Onion said its “exclusive launch advertiser” will be the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
“It’s fitting that a platform once used to profit off of tragedy will be a tool of education, hence our multi-year advertising commitment to this new venture,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement.
Jones did not lose his personal X account, which has more than 3 million followers, in the auction. But the bankruptcy judge is deciding whether his personal accounts can be sold off at the trustee’s request.
Angry and defiant, Jones vows to challenge sale
Jones confirmed The Onion's acquisition of Infowars in a social media video Thursday and said he planned to file legal challenges to stop it.
“Last broadcast now live from Infowars studios. They are in the building. Are ordering shutdown without court approval,” Jones said on the social platform X.
Jones, who had told listeners for days that he had a new studio set up nearby, then resumed his broadcast from the new location, carrying them live on his accounts on X.
Jones' Connecticut lawyer, Norm Pattis, said in a Thursday interview that Sandy Hook was just a small part of the content of Infowars over the years.
"He has millions of listeners for a reason," Pattis said. "That reason is that they're dissatisfied with the status quo. Those listeners will migrate to a new platform, and The Onion will always have its platform, and the gun groupies will always have their platform and very little will change."
Pattis said he will not be looking at The Onion’s new version of Infowars.
"I won't be watching, but I will be watching eagerly to see where Alex Jones resurfaces," he said.
Questions raised over bidding process
At a court hearing Thursday afternoon in Houston, the trustee who oversaw the auction, Christopher Murray, acknowledged that The Onion did not have the highest bid but said it was a better deal overall because some of the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds to pay Jones' other creditors. First United American Companies, a business affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling websites, submitted the only other bid. The trustee said he could not put a dollar amount on The Onion’s bid.
Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said.
Murray said he followed the judge's auction rules laid out in a September order that made the overbidding round optional. But Lopez said he was surprised such a round of bidding was not held and that he had concerns about transparency.
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
An exact date of next week’s hearing was not immediately set.
'A profound sense of justice' over sale, says attorney for Sandy Hook families
For Sandy Hook families, the takedown of the website was the latest win in a years-long legal battle against Jones, who repeatedly said on his show that the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control.
In 2022, parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers.
Following the $1.4 billion verdict on behalf of the Sandy Hook families, a Texas bankruptcy court ruled on the liquidation of Jones’ assets, handing control to an independent trustee tasked with selling the assets off to generate the most possible value for the families.
Chris Mattei, attorney for the Connecticut plaintiffs, said in an interview Thursday that the original $1.4 billion verdict against Jones was "a very cathartic moment."
"And today, you know, I think there's a sense of achievement," he said, "that they've done something good, not just for themselves, but for other families who might find themselves targeted by Alex Jones."
Sandy Hook victims' families felt "a profound sense of justice and a profound sense of pride," over The Onion's purchase of Infowars, Mattei said.
"Against all odds, they persisted over years to get to really an impossible outcome," Mattei said. "Alex Jones is now being deprived of the platform and infrastructure and equipment that he has used to launch attacks against them and so many others for so long."
For Parker, whose daughter was killed in the shooting, the process of healing is ongoing.
"But along the way, you also celebrate the wins," he said, "wins like today — and others that I've had along the way — as I continue to grieve and I continue to heal."
Connecticut Public's Matt Dwyer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
