A federal bankruptcy judge put The Onion‘s winning bid for Alex Jones’s InfoWars media platform on pause to further review the bankruptcy-auction process after Jones and his lawyers claimed the auction was improperly conducted.
The satirical website announced Thursday it had purchased the conspiracy-theory brand. The move was meant as a “hilarious joke,” said parent company Global Tetrahedron CEO Ben Collins. The Onion planned to launch the rebranded InfoWars in January, turning it into a parody of itself that mocks internet personalities like Jones.
Before the acquisition can move forward, Houston judge Christopher Lopez ordered a court hearing for next week to review how the bankruptcy auction played out. Lopez said he had concerns about the auction process and its transparency, according to the Associated Press.
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing, and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” Lopez said. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.” The hearing has not been scheduled yet.
The bid appeared to be a culmination of Jones’s legal saga, in which he filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after he was handed a $1.5 billion defamation verdict for making false claims about the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.
Jones was accused of peddling the narrative that the shooting, in which a gunman killed 20 first-grade students and six teachers twelve years ago, was a massive hoax designed to get federal gun-control legislation enacted. The plaintiffs alleged Jones defamed them on his show and inflicted emotional distress. During one of his two defamation trials, he conceded that the mass shooting was “100 percent real.”
As part of the bankruptcy case, Jones’s personal assets and InfoWars‘ parent company, Free Speech Systems, were meant to be sold off. Families of the Sandy Hook victims and Jones’s other creditors would have been awarded the proceeds.
There were two bidders that wanted to buy InfoWars this week — The Onion and a company affiliated with Jones, First United American Companies. The latter offered to pay $3.5 million, while the former’s bid was lower but remains undisclosed.
The Onion formed an agreement with the Sandy Hook families, who proposed they would forgo a portion of their defamation award and give it to Jones’s other creditors. Christopher Murray, the trustee overseeing Jones’s bankruptcy case, thought this was the better deal.
Jones alleged the auction was “phony” and that Murray changed the sale process on Monday after the sealed bids were submitted by deciding to skip a public round of bidding on Wednesday. Murray said he followed the rules laid out by the judge. Jones also questioned the legality of The Onion‘s offer.
The InfoWars studio in Austin was initially shut down on Thursday, as Murray began the process of securing Jones’s assets. But by Friday, InfoWars reopened. Jones told viewers of his show that Murray had told him it was wrong to shut down the media platform when the sale hadn’t been finalized.
The radio personality called out news outlets that he says falsely reported The Onion bought InfoWars, given the sale hadn’t been approved yet.
“Infowars sale to the Onion never happened,” Jones posted on X on Saturday. “I am back broadcasting from the Infowars studios. We did a live show last night from our recaptured headquarters. Watch the historic broadcast below. This is a huge scandal! MSM is still falsely reporting that the Onion is the new owner.”