A judge has put satirical news company The Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’ Infowars site on hold pending a hearing to review the sale.
Judge Christopher Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston cited concerns about the transparency of the deal soon after the surprise announcement regarding the future of the Infowars site founded by the conspiracy theorist.
“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing, and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” Lopez said at a Thursday court hearing, via the Associated Press. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.” An exact date for the hearing, expected to be some time next week, was not set by the judge.
Los Angeles entertainment attorney Tre Lovell said that Lopez may end up blocking The Onion’s purchase of Infowars if the judge rules the sale is not in the best interest of Jones, or if the satirical news publisher is merely trying to make a “joke” out of the bidding process.
“Jones has a right that his assets not be sold unreasonably as a fire sale or for an illegitimate purpose, but that the process allows the opportunity for bona fide and fair bidding,” Lovell told Newsweek.
“If The Onion’s intent is to make a joke of all this and purposefully seek to ruin the asset at the expense of Jones receiving a more fair and reasonable bid, this would be grounds to disallow the sale.”
Newsweek has contacted The Onion and Infowars for comment via email.
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In a move that was backed by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, The Onion bought Infowars during a bankruptcy auction with an undisclosed bid.
Jones was forced to sell his assets, including Infowars, in order to help pay the nearly $1.5 billion he owes the families of Sandy Hook after falsely claiming the 2012 school shooting—which left 26 people dead, including 20 children—was a hoax and that the grieving parents were “crisis actors.”
Jones later acknowledged the shooting did occur but that the defamation lawsuits should be dismissed for violating his right to free speech.
Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said the plan is to shut down Infowars and relaunch it in January as a satirical site parodying far-right conspiracy theorists while also promoting gun violence prevention from the Everytown for Gun Safety group.
“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,” Collins told AP.
Since Thursday, Infowars.com has been a white screen with the words “Site unavailable till further notice.”
Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones’ online store selling supplements, was the second of two bidders for Infowars at Wednesday’s auction.
Cicack bid $3.5 million for Infowars’ main website and related online businesses, reported The New York Times. The attorney told Lopez in Thursday’s court hearing that he was not given a chance to submit an improved offer after being told the one he placed was not the winning bid.
Christopher Murray, the trustee who oversaw the auction, said The Onion did not place the highest bid at the auction, but it was a better deal because some of the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo some of the sale proceeds to pay Jones’ other creditors, according to AP.
Lopez ruled in September that an overbidding round for the auction was optional. The judge said in Thursday’s hearing that he was surprised the sale did not feature a round of bidding while citing his concerns about the transparency of the auction.
“I personally don’t care who wins the auction,” Lopez said, via Reuters. “I just care about the process.”
In a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, Jones criticized the “rigged” auction process.
“Not only did they not take the highest bid, they won’t even say what was paid,” Jones said. “They didn’t tell the other bidders that they were going to allow future credit—pie in the sky on my future earnings. So they bought my company in a rigged, fake auction that didn’t even happen with my money that doesn’t exist.”
Camron Dowlatshahi, an entertainment attorney and a partner at MSD Lawyers, said The Onion has “won the day” regardless of how the sale goes.
“People on the left celebrated the move, and audiences on the far right who are fans of Alex Jones will be paying more attention to The Onion,” Dowlatshahi told Newsweek.
“The Onion will recover whatever amount it bid in publicity alone. It’s a smart move on their part. Even if the sale doesn’t go through, The Onion took a really creative step that will get them more readers, including some right-wing people who are hearing about The Onion for the first time.”
Everytown for Gun Safety is to serve as the exclusive advertiser for the relaunched Infowars if The Onion’s sale goes through.
The Onion has regularly promoted gun law restrictions in its satirical reporting.
For years, The Onion has republished the headline “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” after a mass shooting has occurred in the U.S.