The Onion's purchase of Alex Jones' Infowars stopped by U.S. judge

U.S. bankruptcy judge halts Onion's purchase of Infowars, citing flawed auction process and insufficient bids.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday (December 10, 2024) stopped the parody news site the Onion from buying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars website, ruling that a bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez rejected Mr. Jones' claims that the auction was plagued by "collusion," at the end of a two-day hearing in Houston.

But he said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who ran the auction made "a good-faith error" by quickly asking for final offers for Infowars instead of encouraging more back-and-forth bidding between the Onion and a company affiliated with Mr. Jones' supplement-selling businesses, which was the runner-up.

"This should have been opened back up, and it should have been opened back up for everybody," Mr. Lopez said. "It's clear the trustee left the potential for a lot of money on the table."

Mr. Lopez said neither of the two offers for Infowars were enough money given the scope of Jones' debts, and told the trustee to work to resolve some of the disputes between the creditors before making a new attempt to sell Infowars.

The Onion was named the winning bidder for Infowars in a November auction, but Mr. Jones and First American United Companies, the Jones-affiliated company, had argued the sale process was tainted because the Onion received too much credit for having the support of families that won large court verdicts against Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022 and was forced to liquidate his assets to pay $1.3 billion in legal judgments to the families of 20 students and six staff members who were fatally shot in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.