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 on Thursday afternoon, the bankruptcy court in Houston overseeing the case put a hold on the sale. The court said it would hold a hearing next week to determine whether the auction process had been sufficiently transparent.
The Onion said the 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.
Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence that was founded in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, will advertise on a relaunched version of the site under The Onion.
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.
Family members 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.
The Onion declined to disclose the price it had paid for Infowars and its assets, including its production studio and diet supplement business, though it said in a tongue-in-cheek story that the site 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.”)
In a court filing Thursday, the trustee in charge of the bankruptcy auction said the deal was expected to close before Nov. 30. The backup bidder is First United American Companies, a business associated with an online supplement store that bears Mr. Jones’s name. That bidder requested a meeting with the judge on Thursday “to address the apparent defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders,” according to a separate court filing.
Mr. Collins said that he was informed late Wednesday by the trustee in charge of the bankruptcy auction that The Onion’s bid had prevailed. In a video posted online Thursday, Mr. Jones said that his lawyers had been told by the trustee about the sale.
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.”
Mr. Collins declined to disclose the value of the advertising deal with Everytown but said that 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. But it is not likely that The Onion takeover will silence him.
Over six years of litigation, Mr. Jones 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 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.
But Thursday’s triumphant announcement masked deep discord among the lawyers who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut and those representing the families of two victims who sued him in Texas, over how the meager proceeds from the sales will be divided.
While the alliance between Everytown and The Onion may seem like an odd fit, the two organizations share an interest in curbing gun violence, said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown. Mr. Feinblatt said that mission was underscored with depressing regularity in the aftermath of mass shootings, when The Onion goes viral with its oft-shared headline: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
“This was an opportunity for us to give The Onion the facts, the storytelling, the data and the research that’s at our fingertips,” Mr. Feinblatt said. “And for them to give us the creativity of how to turn all of that information into new messaging to a new audience.”
Mr. Collins said that the relaunched Infowars might publish its own satirical stories that underscored the epidemic of gun violence in America in addition to sponsored content from Everytown.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, said in a statement that taking possession of Infowars amounted to accountability for “Alex Jones and his corrupt business.”
“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 their 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.
The Onion’s plan is to relaunch Infowars next year with an approach reminiscent of Clickhole, The Onion’s sister site that poked fun at “listicles” from BuzzFeed and other purveyors of viral content.
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 that 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.”
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