Bankruptcy judge could pump the brakes on The Onion’s purchase of InfoWars

The bankruptcy judge overseeing the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars has raised concerns over the process by which satirical publication The Onion won the bid for the conspiracy theorist’s website and related properties, ending his 25-year run of the media company.

During a status conference on Thursday, hours after Jones raged on his final InfoWars broadcast that the “deep state” was shutting him down, District Judge Christopher Lopez said “no one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”

“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” Lopez said from Texas court. “I personally don’t care who wins the auction … I care about process and transparency.”

An evidentiary hearing will determine whether advisers who ran the auction conditioned “a full and fair process,” according to the judge.

The hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

The Onion and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims announced the purchase of InfoWars properties on Thursday, years after Sandy Hook families sued Jones for defamation for calling the massacre a hoax, prompting his chapter 11 bankruptcy. He owes them roughly $1.5 billion in defamation judgments related to his statements about the 2012 massacre, in which a gunman fatally shot 26 people, including children between six and seven years old.

“The joint bid from Global Tetrahedron and the Connecticut families has been selected as the winning bid for InfoWars,” The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins said in a statement to The Independent. “The sale is currently underway as part of the standard processes.”

On what he called his final broadcast on his long-running platform, which trafficks in far-right conspiracy theories, Jones accused the courts of “hijacking” the bidding process and said he would continue to fight the sale while moving his broadcasts to alternate web hosts. His InfoWars website and streaming platform were taken offline while he was broadcasting on Thursday.

Bidders in an auction for Jones’s assets, including InfoWars, were required to submit their best offers, but the amounts were not shared with competing bidders.

The only other bidder — Jones’s proxy First United American Companies — argued that the bidding method meant that competing bidders could not know what they were up against.

The Onion’s parent company Global Tetrahedron has not disclosed its bid. The trustee who ran the auction said the total amount was a better deal overall but came in under First United American’s $3.5 million offer.

“This was an auction that didn’t happen, with a bid that was lower, with money that wasn’t real,” Jones said on social media following news of the offer.

Robbie Parker, whose six-year-old daughter Emilie was among the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook, said in a statement following the sale that “we were told this outcome would be nearly impossible, but we are no strangers to impossible fights.”

“The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability — the dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of InfoWars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” he said.