Satirical news publication The Onion has won the bidding for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars at a US bankruptcy auction.
The bid was backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims to whom Jones owes more than 1 billion dollars in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.
“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.
The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sales price.
The purchase gives a satirical outlet – which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead – control over a brand that has long peddled misinformation and conspiracy.
The Onion was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making Jones a frequent target of mocking articles.
Mass shootings in America, such as the Sandy Hook attack, are often followed by The Onion publishing slightly updated versions of one of its most well-known recurring pieces of satire: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
“No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds,” The Onion said in a satirical post confirming the sale.
“And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.”
The Infowars website was down on Thursday morning.
On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale and auction process in court and saying he would use a new studio that was already set up.
He later announced his show was being shut down, but he resumed a short time later at a new location and using a different social media account.
“The journey has just begun. Thank you,” Jones said as he signed off.
The Onion, based in Chicago, consulted on the bidding with some of the Sandy Hook families that sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas, lawyers for the families said.
“Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones’ ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale,” said Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families.
Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, told The Associated Press in a video interview that it plans to relaunch the Infowars website in January with satire aimed at conspiracy theorists and right-wing personalities, as well as educational information about gun violence prevention from Everytown for Gun Safety.
Mr Collins joked that The Onion’s bid was one trillion dollars but would not disclose the actual amount.
“We thought it would be a very funny joke if we bought this thing, probably one of the better jokes we’ve ever told,” Mr Collins said.
“The (Sandy Hook) families decided they would effectively join our bid, back our bid, to try to get us over the finish line.
“Because 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.”
The publication bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers.
Sandy Hook families sued Jones and his company for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control.
Parents and children of many of the victims gave evidence that they were traumatised by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers.
Sealed bids for the private auction were opened on Wednesday.
Both supporters and detractors of Jones had expressed interest in buying Infowars.
Jones had told listeners that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms.
The bankruptcy trustee named First United American Companies, a company affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling sites, as the “backup bid”, in case The Onion purchase falls through.
First United American Companies asked the bankruptcy court in Houston in a filing on Thursday to hold a status conference immediately on “the apparent defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency, and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders”, saying “the value of the assets is in the process of being destroyed at this very minute”.
