American satire publication The Onion buys conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction

A federal bankruptcy judge in Texas has ordered a hearing into how the satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars

U.S. satirical news publication The Onion was named the winning bidder for Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction Thursday (November 14, 2024), backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Mr. Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the 2012 massacre in the U.S. school a hoax.

The purchase would turn over Mr. Jones’ company, which has peddled conspiracies and misinformation for decades, to a humour website that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January 2025 as a parody. But the judge in Mr. 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 Mr. Jones and a company affiliated with Mr. Jones that put in a $3.5 million bid.

Within hours of the announcement about The Onion's winning bid, Infowars’ website was down and Mr. Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location. Up for sale were Infowars’ website, social media accounts, studio in Texas, trademarks, video archive and other assets.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ 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 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.

The satirical outlet was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making Mr. Jones a frequent target of mocking articles. Mass shootings in the U.S., such as the Sandy Hook attack, are often followed by The Onion publishing slightly updated versions of one of its most well-known recurring pieces: "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

On his live broadcast, Mr. Jones was angry and defiant, calling the sale “a total attack on free speech.” He later announced his show was being shut down. Mr. Jones then resumed his broadcast from a new studio nearby and carried it live on his accounts on X.

Questions about the auction

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 Mr. Jones' other creditors. First United American Companies, a business affiliated with one of Mr. 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 Mr. 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, Mr. Cicack said.

Mr. Murray said he followed the judge's auction rules laid out in a September order that made the overbidding round optional. But Mr. 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.

After the hearing, Mr. Jones said on his show that he thought the auction was unfairly rigged and expressed optimism that the judge would nullify the sale. He has repeatedly told his listeners that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms but that he had set up a new studio, websites and social media accounts in case they were needed.

“This was a auction that didn’t happen, with a bid that was lower, with money that wasn’t real," he said.

Relaunching Infowars

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, told The Associated Press in a video interview earlier Thursday that it planned to relaunch the Infowars website in January with satire aimed at conspiracy theorists and right-wing personalities, as well as educational information about gun violence prevention from the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Mr. Collins would not disclose the bid amount.

“We thought it would be a very funny joke if we bought this thing, probably one of the better jokes we’ve ever told,” Mr. Collins said. “The (Sandy Hook) families decided they would effectively join our bid, back our bid, to try to get us over the finish line. Because by the end of the day, it was us or Alex Jones, who could either continue this website unabated, basically unpunished, for what he’s done to these families over the years, or we could make a dumb, stupid website, and we decided to do the second thing.”

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.

Published - November 15, 2024 08:45 am IST