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 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. The sale price was not immediately disclosed. The Onion said its “exclusive launch advertiser” will be the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
The Infowars website appeared to have been taken down Thursday morning. Jones was angry and defiant as he broadcast live with Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon, vowing to challenge the sale and the auction process in court. Jones said he would move to a new studio, websites, and social media accounts that were already set up.
The Onion, a satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd, 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. It confirmed the sale with a satirical column on its website.
“No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds,” said the post. “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.”
The Onion 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.
Everytown for Gun Safety said it will use the Infowars platform to raise awareness about gun violence.
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.
During his live show Thursday morning, Jones repeatedly said the bankruptcy trustee and others were in the building and threatening to shut down the show at any moment. That did not immediately happen.
“I’m gonna be here until they come in and turn the lights off,” Jones said.
Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. Jones supporters and detractors had expressed interest in buying Infowars.
Jones has been saying on his show that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms. The bankruptcy trustee named First United American Companies, a company affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling sites, as the “backup bid,” in case The Onion purchase falls through.
The purchase of Alex Jones ' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction by the satirical news publication The Onion is the latest twist in a yearslong saga between the far-right conspiracy theorist and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims.
The sale was ordered after relatives of many of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 shooting successfully sued Jones and his company for defamation and emotional distress. Jones repeatedly made false claims on his show that the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control.
Here are some things to know about how Jones’ misinformation empire ended up on the auction block.
The rise of Infowars
Fresh out of high school in the early 1990s, Jones, a barrel-chested, gravelly voiced Texas native, started broadcasting on a public-access television channel in the state capital. From the start, Jones promoted conspiracies about the U.S. government and false claims about a secret New World Order.
In 2004, Jones had two employees and a tiny office in south Austin. In 2007, he formed Free Speech Systems, to run his growing media business, according to court records in his bankruptcy cases. By 2010, Jones had over 60 employees.
As the outlandish nature of his false claims grew, so did his media empire, with annual revenues of up to $80 million, and a fanbase that at his height listened to him on more than 100 radio stations across the United States as well as through his Infowars website and social media.
Jones’ Newtown lies
Jones has acknowledged in court that he promoted the conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax perpetrated in part by the U.S. government as part of an effort to expand gun control. He called the parents of slain children “crisis actors” on his show and said the shooting was “phony as a three-dollar bill.”
After separate defamation lawsuits were filed in Connecticut and Texas by family members of victims, Jones acknowledged in 2022 that the shooting was “100% real” and said it was “absolutely irresponsible” to call it a hoax.
The lawsuits against Jones
Victims’ families who sued Jones said they were subjected to years of torment, threats, and abuse by people who believed the lies told on his show.
Courts in Texas and Connecticut found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax and awarded the families nearly $1.5 billion in damages. In both states, the judges issued default judgments finding Jones liable without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over many documents. Juries then heard evidence and decided on the amount of damages, with judges tacking on additional penalties.
The sale of Jones’ Infowars empire
The auctions resulted from Jones’ personal bankruptcy case, which he filed in late 2022. Many of Jones’ personal assets also are being liquidated to help pay the judgment. Up for sale was everything from Jones’ studio desk to Infowars’ name, video archive, social media accounts, and product trademarks. Buyers could even purchase an armored truck and video cameras.
The Onion acquired Infowars’ website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive. The sale price was not disclosed.
After the sale was announced, Infowars’ website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.
Jones vowed to challenge the sale and auction process in court, and late Thursday a federal judge ordered a hearing into exactly how The Onion won the bidding. Lawyers for Jones and a company affiliated with Infowars alleged the trustee overseeing the auction changed the bidding process just days before it was held.
Headlines from the satirical website The Onion on Thursday: “New Dating Site Suggests People You Already Know But Thought You Were Too Good For.” “Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets to Run Foreign Policy Meetings.” “Here’s Why I Decided to Buy Infowars.”
Only one has the ring of truth. Sort of.
The bylined author of the Infowars article, Bryce P. Tetraeder, doesn’t actually exist. And the Onion doesn’t plan to invest in business school scholarships for promising cult leaders.
But the Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory-saturated media empire at a bankruptcy auction tied to lawsuits by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims is very real — an effort to fight falsehoods with funny and a who’d-have-thunk-it development in an already somewhat unbelievable year. An element of doubt was added late Thursday when the judge in Jones’ bankruptcy case ordered a hearing for next week on how the auction was conducted.
On Thursday, The Onion immediately shut down Infowars and said it plans to relaunch it in January as a parody of conspiracy theorists.
“Our goal in a couple of years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website that exists,” said Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO. “It was previously the dumbest website that exists.”
It’s the end — at least for now — of a long chapter
The purchase, for an undisclosed sum, was backed by Sandy Hook families, who were awarded nearly $1.5 billion in lawsuits against Jones for his false claims that the 2012 shootings at a Connecticut elementary school were a hoax.
The new Infowars will be a satire of theories Jones advanced, which themselves were so absurd that they could have seemed satirical if they hadn’t caused real-life harm. The development ends one tentacle of a loose network of podcasters, TikTok influencers and others whose content keeps people perpetually provoked and enraged, Collins said. He called Jones one small character in a universe of fear-based media.
“They’ve had a free pass to this point and we don’t think that’s fair,” he said.
At the very least, he said, the Onion hopes to return some fun to the Internet to offset years of doomscrolling.
In Collins, who once covered misinformation for NBC News, the new venture has a leader uniquely suited to what is being attempted, said Dale Beran, who made this year’s Netflix documentary, “The Anti-Social Network,” about the topic.
The Onion, founded as a newspaper in 1988, has gone through several ownership changes and was purchased earlier this year by a group that includes Jeff Lawson, co-founder of the software company Twilio. Since then, Beran said, it “feels like there is new life breathed into it.”
Done well, a satirical site on conspiracy theories and those who traffic in them could meet a historical moment much like comedian Stephen Colbert did when his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” mocked pompous conservative television talk show hosts a decade and more ago.
And what will happen when some of Jones’ casual fans who didn’t follow the news of the bankruptcy auction log on to Infowars in a few months only to find the Onion’s new creation? Probably not much, said Beran, who suggested it’s unlikely there’s much overlap between people attracted by conspiracy theories and those who want to mock them.
Conspiracy theories abound about the fate of conspiracy theories
Indeed, conspiracy theories about the Onion’s purchase of Infowars began popping up online only hours after it was announced.
“There’s no chance this outlet which hasn’t been relevant in years was able to afford this purchase on their own. Who was really behind this?” the website Zeee Media, which bills itself as “one of the most trusted, uncensored sources of information in Australia,” posted on X.
Jones himself hurriedly posted a video aimed at his fans on Thursday. “This is a total attack on free speech,” he said. “The deep state is completely out of control.”
There is an impact any time a prominent website that traffics in misinformation is shut down. Still, the business model of reaching people who want to be enraged is still viable, Beran said. Another expert in misinformation suggested Jones will quickly move on, and his fans will move with him.
“As long as people are willing to tune in, he will find new outlets,” said Yotam Ophir, head of the Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism Lab at the University of Buffalo. “If anything, the Onion trolling and the court cases against him will just make some of his most dedicated fans even more sure of his righteousness, seeing him as a martyr for free speech.”
At the very least, the Onion purchase offered a moment of zen for liberals who have had a pretty rough week or so following Donald Trump’s election victory and the GOP sweep in Congress.
“This is bad karma turned good,” wrote Timothy W. Larson, who describes himself on X as an “unabashed progressive.” “I love it.”