Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars at auction with Sandy Hook families' backing

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

The purchase would turn 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. But the judge in 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 Jones and a company affiliated with Jones that put in a US$3.5 million bid.

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Within hours of the announcement about The Onion's winning bid, Infowars' website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location. Up for sale were Infowars' website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, 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 -- which carries the banner of "America's 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."

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

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

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

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After the hearing, 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.

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. 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," 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 three million followers, in the auction. But the bankruptcy judge is deciding whether his personal accounts can be sold off at the trustee's request.

Sandy Hook families sued Jones and his company for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones' conspiracies and threats by his followers. Jones has since acknowledged the shooting was "100 per cent real."

The Onion, based in Chicago, bills itself as "the world's leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events." Recent headlines have included, "Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets To Run Foreign Policy Meetings," "Oklahoma Law Requires Ten Commandments To Be Displayed In Every Womb" and "Man Forgetting Difference Between Meteoroid, Meteorite Struggles To Describe What Just Killed His Dog."

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Associated Press writer Ken Miller contributed from Oklahoma City.