Judge Shuts Down The Onion's Bold Move to Take Over Infowars
Judge Shuts Down The Onion's Bold Move to Take Over Infowars.
A US bankruptcy judge has turned down the sale of Alex Jones's Infowars website to the satirical news site The Onion.
After a two-day hearing, Judge Christopher Lopez decided that the auction for Infowars didn’t yield the best possible bids. He also dismissed Jones's allegations of "collusion" during the auction process.
The Onion's bid was reportedly backed by families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, who had previously won a $1.5 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false information about the tragedy.
Judge Lopez noted that the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the auction made a "good-faith error." He pointed out that instead of rushing to finalize offers, they should have encouraged more competitive bidding between The Onion and a company linked to Jones's supplement business.
"This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody," Judge Lopez said.
Jones was thrilled about the judge's decision regarding Infowars, labelling the auction process as "ridiculous" and "fraudulent."
"We are deeply disappointed in today's decision“, Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion's parent company, Global Tetrahedron, posted on social media.
The firm will continue its efforts to buy Infowars, he added.
Jones was a somewhat obscure broadcaster in Austin, Texas during the 1990s, but he later attracted millions of followers with a blend of opinions, speculation, and outright lies.
The bulk of the company's revenue comes from its online store that sells vitamins and various other products.
The financial troubles faced by both the company and Jones originated from broadcasts made following the tragic December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
In that incident, twenty young children and six staff members lost their lives.
In the aftermath, Jones and his guests repeatedly questioned the reality of the massacre, promoting conspiracy theories that suggested the shootings were staged or orchestrated by government agents.
Jones is also on record calling the attack "a giant hoax" and in 2015 he said: "Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured… I knew they had actors there clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids, and it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors."
People who bought into the conspiracy theories that Jones promoted harassed the families of Sandy Hook victims, even going so far as to send them photos of their deceased children or their gravestones, and sharing their personal details online.
Some even made the trip to Newtown to "investigate," leading to several arrests related to the harassment of these families.
Eventually, Jones admitted that the shootings were real but claimed his comments were protected under US free speech laws.
Despite this, the victims' families won defamation cases against him and his company for his misleading statements.
In 2022, he filed for bankruptcy as the Sandy Hook case progressed, and by June 2024, a judge ordered the sale of Jones's personal assets. This included a multimillion-dollar ranch, various properties, cars, boats, and firearms, amounting to about $8.6 million according to court documents.
The judge's decision to reject The Onion's bid to acquire Infowars represents a missed opportunity to repurpose a platform infamous for spreading harmful conspiracy theories into one focused on satire and accountability. Allowing Alex Jones to retain influence over the process prolongs the damage caused by his rhetoric, which has already devastated the lives of Sandy Hook victims' families.
The bankruptcy trustee’s mishandling of the auction reflects a lack of rigor in ensuring fair and meaningful outcomes. Ultimately, this ruling delays justice and perpetuates the toxic legacy of Infowars, leaving its future in limbo while victims await real closure.
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