Why The Onion’s Infowars bid has been blocked — for now

In November, satirical newspaper The Onion won a bankruptcy auction to purchase Infowars, a website dedicated to hawking anti-government conspiracy theories. On Wednesday, however, a federal bankruptcy judge rejected the purchase on the grounds that the auction wasn’t conducted in a sufficiently transparent fashion, and didn’t produce as many proceeds as it could have.

At stake in this case is the future control of Infowars, which was started by far-right commentator Alex Jones. The site has spread false information and conspiracy theories about a wide range of subjects, including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Depending on next steps, The Onion could still successfully complete its acquisition, Jones could find a way to effectively retain control of the site, or the trustee overseeing the case could decide on another option altogether.

To make its bid, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, joined with family members of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, who have been frequent targets of Infowars’s conspiracy theories. The goal of the purchase, according to a press release in November, was “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.”

In a statement early Wednesday morning, Onion CEO Ben Collins reiterated that the publication would continue to pursue acquiring Infowars and “seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured.”

How Infowars got here — and what comes next

Infowars was founded in 1999 and established itself as an outlet that elevated fringe, right-wing ideas about numerous tragedies. It has featured claims that September 11 was an “inside job,” that the 2011 Tucson, Arizona, shooting of US Rep. Gabby Giffords was part of a government mind control campaign, and that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing also included government involvement.

Jones is widely credited with normalizing the proliferation of conspiracy theories in the right-wing media ecosystem, in large part due to the reach of his website, and later, a radio broadcast and web show.

Following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook, Jones suggested the attack was a “hoax,” that the children who died were still alive, and that their parents were paid actors who were in on the setup. “Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns!” he claimed, repeatedly arguing that the shooting was a staged effort to advance gun control policies.

Jones’s falsehoods fueled rampant harassment and abuse of family members of children and adults killed at Sandy Hook, prompting them to sue him for defamation. In 2022, a court determined that Jones needed to pay these families a total of $1.5 billion in damages due to his falsehoods and the harm they caused.

That same year, Jones filed for bankruptcy protection both for his personal assets, and for his company, Free Speech Systems, which includes Infowars. In June, US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez ordered Jones to liquidate his personal assets to start paying Sandy Hook families; in September, Lopez approved an auction for Infowars.

That auction took place in November, and only two parties offered bids: The Onion, and First United American, a web vendor in Jones’s name that sells nutritional supplements. The Onion’s bid was $1.75 million in cash and included additional assets, while First United American’s was $3.5 million in cash. The trustee overseeing the auction, Christopher Murray, concluded that The Onion’s bid was worth more, and came out to around $7 million, due to the extra assets. Those assets included pledges from some Sandy Hook families, who had agreed to give up a share of the proceeds they’d otherwise receive from the auction.

In his rejection of the deal, Lopez concluded that the auction didn’t produce as many funds as it could have for its beneficiaries, because it was not conducted in an open proceeding where the two parties could compete against one another. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding.”

For that reason, he’s directed Murray to figure out an alternative plan. It’s not yet clear what form that might take, but another auction won’t be conducted.

The outcome of the sale will decide whether The Onion is able to fully remake Infowars into a new outlet — what Collins described in November as a “cosmic joke” — and shut down its efforts to spread false propaganda, or if an entity associated with Jones could try to maintain its existing operations. One other possibility is that the Sandy Hook families obtain Infowars as part of settlements they have yet to receive, the Associated Press reported. Collins has said if The Onion is able to purchase the site, it intends to both transform its content and bring on the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety as its only advertiser.