Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars at auction with Sandy Hook families' backing
The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.
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. Within hours of the sales announcement Thursday, Infowars website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.
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 Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platforms website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sales price.
The satirical outlet which carries the banner of Americas Finest News Source on its masthead was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making 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.
No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds, The Onion said in a satirical post about the sale. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.
On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale in court and calling it a total attack on free speech. He later announced his show was being shut down. 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.
He claimed the takeover by The Onion was premature because the bankruptcy judge had not yet signed off on the winning bid.
A Jones-affiliated company named by the bankruptcy trustee as the backup bid requested an immediate status conference, citing the apparent defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency, and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders.” A hearing was scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Houston.
The Onion, based in Chicago, consulted on the bidding with some of the Sandy Hook families that sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas, lawyers for the families said.
Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale, said Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families.
Ben Collins, CEO of The Onions parent company, Global Tetrahedron, told The Associated Press in a video interview that it will 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. Collins would not disclose the sale price.
We thought it would be a very funny joke if we bought this thing, probably one of the better jokes weve ever told, 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 hes done to these families over the years, or we could make a dumb, stupid website, and we decided to do the second thing.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the organization will be the exclusive advertiser on the new Infowars website.
When you think about the unmitigated harm that Alex Jones and Infowars brought to Sandy Hook families, its just poetic justice that now Everytown and The Onion together will open a new chapter on Infowars and a chapter that is devoted to the issue of gun safety, he told the AP.
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 trustees request.
