Judge rejects The Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ Infowars

The sale of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ website Infowars to parody news platform The Onion has been rejected by a US bankruptcy judge.

After a two-day hearing, Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that an auction by Infowars did not result in the best possible bids.

However, he rejected Jones’ claims that the auction was riddled with “collusion.”

The Onion said the nomination was secured with the support of the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumors about the massacre.

Judge Lopez said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who conducted the auction made “a good faith error.”

Instead of quickly asking for final bids at the auction, they should have encouraged more bids between The Onion and a company affiliated with Jones’ supplement sales businesses, he said.

“This should have been opened again, and it should have been opened again for everyone,” Judge Lopez said.

Jones welcomed the judge’s ruling on Infowars and called the auction process “ridiculous” and “fraudulent.”

“We are deeply disappointed by today’s decision,” Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, posted on social media.

The company will continue its efforts to buy Infowars, he added.

Jones was a fringe figure broadcasting in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s and later building an audience of millions with a mix of opinion, speculation and outright fabrication.

The company makes most of its money through an online store that sells vitamins and other products.

The company’s (and Jones’) financial difficulties stem from broadcasts made after the December 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Twenty young children and six school staff members were killed in the attack.

After the murders, Jones and guests on his broadcasts repeatedly questioned whether the massacre really occurred, raising conspiracy theories about whether the murders were faked or carried out by government agents.

At one point, Jones called the attack “a giant hoax” and in 2015 said: “Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with, in my opinion, fabricated actors…I knew they had actors there clearly, but I thought they killed to some.” “Real kids, and it shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors.”

Believers in the web of conspiracy theories Jones wove harassed the families of Sandy Hook victims, in some cases sending them photos of their dead children or tombstones and posting their personal information online.

Some traveled to Newtown to “investigate” and several people have been arrested in connection with the harassment of the victims.

Jones later acknowledged that the murders were real and insisted that his statements were covered by US free speech protections.

But relatives of the victims won defamation judgments against Jones and his company for their false statements.

He filed for bankruptcy in 2022 when the Sandy Hook case came to court, and in June 2024, a judge ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets. This included a multimillion-dollar ranch, other property, cars, boats and weapons, totaling about $8.6 million, according to a court filing.