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https://apnews.com/article/onion-buys-infowars-alex-jones-6496f198d141c991087dcd937b3588e9
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 sale’s 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 platform’s 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 “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.”
“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 Onion’s 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 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.”
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, it’s 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 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% real.”
The Onion bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers. 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.”
Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. The bankruptcy trustee named First United American Companies, which is affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling sites, as the backup bid should the sale to The Onion fall through.
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You can oppose gun control without lying about one of the issues related to gun control. The simple fact that Alex Jones lied outright about such a sensitive issue is proof enough to me that the cause of opposing gun control is worthless.
Alex Jones really should be in prison, but the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and the press means that it is perfectly LEGAL to tell lies for the sake of political propaganda. Which is why he and others like him have to be sued instead. Slander and libel are civil rather than criminal issues.
There should be NO legal or civil penalty for telling and printing the TRUTH, but lies about anything or anyone should never be tolerated anymore. The First Amendment in its current form is worthless and it should be replaced. I would recommend it say:
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
Want to bet someone, likely Elon Musk or Donald Trump, bribed the judge in this case? This is why courts should not be fully trusted anymore!
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/10/nx-s1-5224170/infowars-alex-jones-the-onion-bankruptcy-judge
Bankruptcy judge rejects The Onion’s bid for Infowars
The owners of The Onion say they are “deeply disappointed” in a judge’s decision to reject their bid to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars company. Late Tuesday, a federal bankruptcy judge said last month’s auction of Jones’ business, and The Onion’s bid, which had been selected as the winner, were flawed.
After two days of testimony in Houston, Judge Christopher Lopez took issue with what he called the lack of transparency in the process, the uneven playing field and the failure to maximize value for the people to whom Jones owes money.
The decision is a significant — and rare — win for Jones, who has been embroiled in a long legal battle with relatives of the 26 children and educators killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., who sued Jones for defamation in 2018.
The families said Jones’ repeated lies that the 2012 shooting never happened prompted his followers to mercilessly stalk and threaten them for years. After Jones refused to cooperate at trial, judges in Connecticut and Texas found him liable by default, and juries then awarded the families more than a billion dollars in damages, which Jones is still appealing. He then declared bankruptcy, and his media company, Free Speech Systems, was ordered to be sold off to help pay at least a fraction of what he owes the families.
The Connecticut families immediately expressed disappointment through a statement from their attorney, Chris Mattei. The decision is all the more poignant to the families, as it comes just days before the anniversary of the shooting on Dec. 14.
“These families, who have already persevered through countless delays and roadblocks, remain resilient and determined as ever to hold Alex Jones and his corrupt businesses accountable for the harm he has caused,” Mattei said.
Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said he “will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured,” but lamented “that everyone was sent back to the drawing board with no winner, and no clear path forward for any bidder.”
In an “emergency” broadcast Tuesday night, Jones crowed about his “victory” and derided the auction as yet another case of corruption and collusion.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen, we can celebrate the judge doing the right thing with the most ridiculous fraudulent auction known in human history,” he said, calling The Onion offer “freaking cuckoo bird.”
Judge says the auction ‘left a lot of money on the table’
Lopez rejected allegations from Jones’ lawyers of a “rigged process” and “collusion” between the Trustee and The Onion. The judge said he believes everyone acted in good faith, but that the trustee overseeing the sale should have “scratched and clawed” to get a higher offer for the families.
“I don’t like second-guessing trustees,” the judge said, but that is exactly what he did.
“It’s clear that [U.S. bankruptcy trustee Christopher Murray] left a lot of money on the table,” Lopez said, adding that he thought the process was “doomed” the moment Murray decided to cancel a live auction and call for sealed “best and final” offers instead.
The losing bidder, a business connected to Jones called First United American Companies, offered $3.5 million for Infowars. The Onion, in partnership with the Connecticut families, offered $1.75 million in cash, plus a novel sweetener they said raised the bid’s value to at least $7 million. The families agreed to forgo some of the money they’re entitled to, in order to raise the amount that other creditors, including the Texas families, could collect. But the judge said both offers were too small.
Lopez said he wants the trustee to sell Infowars in a way that will bring in more money — but how to do that, he said, is up to the trustee. And the judge wants to hear the plan in 30 days.
The decision means Jones will be able to continue his show under the Infowars name, to his Inforwars audience and from his Infowars studio — at least for now. Had The Onion’s bid been approved, Jones would have been kicked out of his studio and would have had to start rebuilding his audience and his brand from a back-up studio. The Onion’s intent was to “end Infowars’ relentless barrage of disinformation” and replace it with their brand of satire to skewer Jones’ brand of conspiracy mongering. The site would have also promoted gun violence prevention through a collaboration with Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy and research group.
Trustee grilled for more than eight hours Tuesday
Tuesday’s hearing was particularly contentious, stretching on to nearly 11:30 p.m. ET. Attorneys for FUAC and Jones aggressively pressed Murray, who was on the stand for more than eight hours Tuesday, prompting multiple objections about badgering the witness and reminders from the judge to “maintain decorum.”
Murray maintained that he was well within his authority to hold the kind of auction he thought would yield the highest value for creditors. He said he analyzed The Onion multiple ways and that any way you sliced it it was the higher and better deal for the creditors.
“Under all of those different scenarios and permutations, [The Onion’s offer] was just better than the other,” Murray said. “By a lot.”
Jones’ conspiracy-laden broadcasts go back some 25 years, and have included claims that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. He was kicked off multiple social media sites in recent years, but he got a big boost when Elon Musk reinstated his Twitter (now X) account late last year.
Jones has been fighting to avoid losing his X account again, fearing it would be sold as part of his bankruptcy estate. Again, X showed up for Jones, arguing that the accounts belonging to X Corp., cannot be considered property of the estate and cannot be transferred or sold without X’s consent.
The trustee and X announced on Monday they’d struck a deal that would allow Infowars’ buyer to acquire the content from Infowars’ X accounts, but not the accounts themselves. However, the judge’s decision to reject The Onion deal now throws this issue, like everything else, back into question.
Bruce Markell, a former U.S. bankruptcy judge and now Northwestern law school professor, said the judge’s decision was shocking and disappointing.
“It seems that the good was held hostage to the better,” Markell said, and now “the costs of dealing with an obstreperous debtor [Jones] just keep mounting.”
But Mattei, the attorney for the Connecticut families, insisted the families will not give up on forcing Jones to make good on what he owes.
“Soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families, and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes.”