Alex Jones’ Infowars conspiracy theory media empire was bought by satirical news organisation The Onion, the company reported Thursday.
A private auction for Infowars took place Wednesday morning as part of a personal bankruptcy plan to pay the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting after Jones spent years falsely claiming the shooting that left 20 kids and six adults dead never happened, and that those whose loved ones were killed were actors.
Ben Collins, chief executive at The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said on social media that InfoWars was bought with the blessing of the Sandy Hook families affected by Jones’ misinformation campaign. The new Infowars, he said, will be relaunched by employees of The Onion and eventually look like a parody of itself — to include ads by Everytown for Gun Safety, an anti-gun violence nonprofit launched after of the Sandy Hook shooting.
“We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website,” Collins wrote on social media app Bluesky. “We have retained the services of some Onion and Clickhole Hall of Famers to pull this off. I can’t wait to show you what we have cooked up.”
Jones lost two court cases in 2022 after several Sandy Hook families sued him for defamation and won nearly $1.5 billion in damages against him.
Because the auction was private, the names of bidders were not disclosed. This also means there wasn’t a chance for a competitive bidding process.
Christopher Murray, a federal court-appointed trustee, will distribute the funds from the auction sale to estate creditors, including Sandy Hook families Jones defamed.
Along with the Infowars name and website, bidders had the opportunity to purchase a Winnebago motor home and an armoured truck. Items that weren’t sold at Wednesday’s auction will be sold in a second auction to take place in December.