A federal judge has rejected the sale of Alex Jones’ Infowars to the satirical website The Onion.
The late Tuesday ruling from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez comes after Jones claimed that a recent bankruptcy auction was fraught with illegal collusion.
The Onion was named the winning bidder last month over a company affiliated with Jones. Lopez’s decision means Jones can stay at Infowars in Austin, Texas. The Onion had planned to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January as a parody.
Lopez criticized the auction process as flawed and said the outcome “left a lot of money on the table” for victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
A trustee who oversaw the Infowars bankruptcy auction told the judge Tuesday that he picked The Onion’s bid for the conspiracy-filled platform because it was far better than the only other proposal he received, from a company affiliated with Alex Jones.
Trustee Christopher Murray testified during the second day of a hearing where a judge is scrutinizing Murray’s decision to name the satirical news outlet’s offer as the winning bid after a November auction that Jones alleges involved fraud and collusion.
The Onion offered $1.75 million in cash and other incentives for Infowars’ assets in the auction that concluded on Nov. 14. First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name that sells nutritional supplements, bid $3.5 million.
Although The Onion’s cash offer was lower than that of First United American, it included a pledge by many of the Sandy Hook families to forgo $750,000 of the auction proceeds due to them and give it to other creditors, providing the other creditors more money than they would receive under First United American’s bid.
During a broadcast from his Austin studios earlier Tuesday, Jones said: “I can’t imagine the judge would certify this fraud.”
“I mean it’s head-spinning the stuff they did and what they claimed,” he said.
The sale of Infowars is part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy case, filed in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in defamation lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
