The Onion’s winning bid for the assets of Alex Jones’ bankrupt conspiracy-theory site Infowars is under further review.
The bankruptcy judge overseeing the Chapter 7 liquidation of Infowars and Jones’ assets on Thursday temporarily halted the transfer of Infowars to the Onion and ordered an evidentiary hearing to review the auction — in which bids were submitted secretly. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction,” Judge Christopher Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas said at an emergency status conference, according to an audio recording of the hearing shared by the court in the docket Friday. The hearing has been set for Nov. 25.
Related Stories
Jones and his Free Speech Systems LLC, parent company of Infowars, filed for bankruptcy in 2022. That came as families of the victims in the Sandy Hook mass shooting in Connecticut won a $1.4 billion verdict in their defamation lawsuit against Jones — who had repeatedly lied about the tragedy on his platforms and bizarrely accused the families of collaborating in an anti-gun conspiracy plot with the U.S. government. The Onion’s winning bid for Infowars was backed by the Connecticut families, which “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of the Onion’s bid,” according to lawyers for the families.
Popular on Variety
In a statement Friday to Variety, Ben Collins, the ex-NBC News reporter who is now CEO of The Onion’s parent company, said, “The joint bid from Global Tetrahedron and the Connecticut families has been selected as the winning bid for Infowars. The sale is currently underway, pending standard processes.”
At the status conference Thursday afternoon in Houston, lawyers for Jones and the only other bidder in the Infowars auction — First United American Companies, which operates the ShopAlexJones.com website — complained about the secrecy of the process, in which bids for a “best-and-final offer” were sealed. The terms of the Onion’s winning bid have not been disclosed. The trustee who oversaw the auction, Christopher Murray, told the court that the Onion did not have a higher cash bid than First United (which bid $3.5 million).
But, according to Murray, the Onion’s deal was picked as the superior offer because the Connecticut families agreed to forgo much of money Jones’ owes them in order to pay other creditors. With the bid from the Onion and Connecticut families, “the creditors ended up significantly better off, and that’s why I chose to do, select that as a winning bidder,” Murray said. He called the families’ agreement to waive their monetary claims as a “gift” to the other Infowars creditors: “I’ve never seen this before in any other case.”
Judge Lopez said he was not aware of the sealed-bid format the trustee implemented nor did he know specifically what assets in the case were being sold. He expressed concern about the way bids were submitted and reviewed by the trustee, and noted that First United (which the trustee designated as the “backup bidder”) didn’t know what the Onion and the Connecticut families had bid. “We’re holding an evidentiary hearing, and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” the judge said. Later, he said, “My concern is the lack of transparency in the process.”
“I don’t care who wins or loses [the auction]. I care about process,” Judge Lopez said.
Lawyers for Elon Musk’s X also appeared at Thursday’s status conference and told the judge that X was reserving ownership rights to Jones’ personal account on the social network (formerly known as Twitter) as it relates to the bankruptcy auction.
After the Onion was announced as the winning bidder Thursday, the Infowars website went dark — it currently displays a message that says “Site unavailable till further notice” — as the trustee began securing the assets of Free Speech Systems. [UPDATE: On Friday, the Infowars site came back online sometime after 9 a.m. PT.]
Pending the court’s approval of its acquisition, the Onion plans to relaunch Infowars in January 2025 as a parody of far-right online subculture. “The Onion’s goal with the acquisition is to end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation for the sake of selling supplements and replace it with The Onion’s relentless barrage of humor for good,” Global Tetrahedron said Thursday. Collins, in a statement, said, “The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash. Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin.”
Jones, who is banned from most major internet platforms over hate-speech and harassment violations, was reinstated on X by Elon Musk last year. Late Thursday, he posted updates on X about the judge’s order for an evidentiary hearing about the bankruptcy auction. “HOAX ALERT! The Onion did not buy INFOWARS! There was no auction! Federal Judge now investigating!” he wrote.
Infowars’ account on X, meanwhile, expressed unhappiness with the situation thusly in a post just before 2 a.m. ET on Friday: “The Onion sucks.” In a post Thursday on Bluesky, Collins said the Onion’s acquisition of Infowars was “funniest thing that has ever happened.”
Families of Sandy Hook victims sued Jones for defamation after he called the mass murder a “hoax” and falsely accused the parents of the children killed at the elementary school of colluding with the U.S. government in a supposed plot to restrict gun rights. In December 2012, 20 students and six adults died in the shooting at the school in Newtown, Conn.
(Pictured above: Imaged released by Global Tetrahedron after it was selected as the winning bidder for Infowars)
