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The Onion wins auction for Alex Jones' media company
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Alex Jones' Infowars company has shut down, after being sold in a bankruptcy auction to The Onion. No joke.
The satirical news outlet was the winning bidder of Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, with help from the Connecticut families who sued Jones for defamation. The sale, which still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy judge, includes Jones' studio and equipment, his lucrative online nutritional supplement store, domain names, customer lists and some of his social media accounts. Jones continued his broadcast Thursday from a back-up studio he had set up.
Lawyers were already racing to the bankruptcy court after the news broke on Thursday, raising concerns about the auction process and some of the items that the sale included. By the end of the day, Jones was back in his studio claiming that he cannot be kicked out until the judge approves the sale, and Jones suggested that was dubious.
Proceeds of any sale will go to paying down Jones' nearly $1.5 billion debt to families of Sandy Hook victims who won defamation suits against him in Connecticut and Texas, after he spread false conspiracy theories that the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., never happened. Jones accused the families of being actors, faking the killing of 20 children and 6 educators, in an effort to drum up support for gun control, and his supporters who believed the lies threatened and harassed the families for years.
The Onion hasn't disclosed how much it bid for Jones' company. The Connecticut families sweetened the deal by agreeing to give up some of their proceeds, hoping that would boost The Onion's chances of winning.
Chris Mattei, attorney for the Connecticut plaintiffs, told NPR, "Money was never their goal, and if taking less money meant that they would be able to shut down Infowars and Alex Jones and protect other families from suffering that they suffered, they were more than willing to do that."
Mattei added in a statement, "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."
The sentiment was echoed by Robbie Parker, who was relentlessly harassed by some of Jones' followers while he was grieving his daughter Emilie, who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
"The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability," Parker said. "The dissolution of Alex Jones' assets and the death of infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for."
The Onion has also partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. Everytown President John Feinblatt called the deal "poetic justice."
"This has been a bastion of misinformation. It's been a bastion of extremism, and it's been a bastion of hate," Feinblatt said, adding that Everytown's data and research combined with The Onion's humor will make for an effective strategy to reach any of Jones' followers who might stick around on Infowars' website.
"They have been fed hate, they have been fed fear, and they have been fed misinformation. And this is an opportunity to feed them the truth. And we know that humor is one way to actually bridge divides," Feinblatt said.
The deal quickly drew both chuckles and challenges.
"Hollywood couldn't write a more comical end to Infowars, especially one in which the victims of Jones' bile get both monetary and moral relief," said Bruce Markell, a former U.S. bankruptcy judge and now Northwestern School of Law professor.
One of Jones' own team only half-joked on air that "it feels like they just bit into an onion."
Jones alleges the auction was rigged
Jones himself railed against the deal all day on his show, as he said he was being told he had to vacate the premises, and as he continued his show later from his back-up studio. He vowed he would not go down without a fight.
"We're going out like vikings with swords in our arms," he said, decrying the auction process as being rigged against him, and threatening a court challenge over any "chicanery."
"At the last minute, the rules of the auction changed," Jones alleged. "What was going to be an open auction where you [...] could offer more money and top [previous] bids, but now they've decided that it'll just be sealed and there's one bid and whoever's the highest gets it."
One of the bidders who lost out to The Onion, First United American Companies, is also crying foul, alleging in an emergency hearing Thursday before federal bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that there were "defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders."
FUAC's attorney Walter Cicack argued that the Onion bid, because of its sweetener from the Connecticut families, amounts to both cash and credit, even though FUAC said it was told credit bids would not be allowed. Cicack also objected that his clients still don't know the value of The Onion's bid. The bankruptcy trustee started to reply, revealing that FUAC's bid was $3.5 million, before being cut off by the judge.
Judge Lopez expressed some concern about the auction process and lack of transparency, and called for a hearing to be scheduled on those issues soon. Meantime, a separate hearing is expected early next week, on whether Jones was forced to leave his studio prematurely, before a sale is approved and finalized. Joshua Wolfshohl, attorney for the bankruptcy trustee who's overseeing the sale expressed "significant concern that assets would start going out the back door, because people don't like who the buyer is." Jones' attorney, Vickie Driver, shot back with her own concern that Jones' company should not be shut down solely because "there was an assumption that people in that building were going to commit crimes [...] and I don't know what the evidence is of that."
For his part, Mattei, the attorney for Connecticut families, says he's confident the sale will pass muster in court. "The bankruptcy trustee's responsibility was to determine in his business judgment what the best bid was, and he determined it was the bid that the Connecticut families supported," Mattei said.
Jones says he'll keep working, while families say they'll keep chasing his future earnings
Jones had been hoping a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to keep doing his show. He characterized it as a contest between the "good guys" (his allies) and "the bad guys" (who would leave him out of his job). But Jones also vowed that he won't miss a beat behind the mic, having received multiple offers to host his show.
He insisted the "attacks" on him and on his show were boosting his audience, even as he pleaded for viewers' financial help.
"I don't roll over to tyrants and I'll never surrender," Jones said, before quickly adding, "but we need funds to beat them." He implored his audience to go to his online store and buy his new "Trump Patriot Apparel" and limited edition posters that would help support his show.
Jones also pitched his line of vitamins and nutrition supplements, which comprise a significant chunk of his revenues. He's now selling those on a separate website owned by his father — a move families' attorneys have challenged in court as a shell company meant to shield revenues from the plaintiff families.
Jones is still appealing what he calls the "fake court cases" and "show trials."
If approved, the Infowars sale would cap a stormy but financially successful run for Jones as sole owner of his media company. He started his career with a local radio show in Texas more than 25 years ago, and built up his brand as a leading purveyor of conservative conspiracy theories, claiming even that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. In recent years, Jones ran into trouble for problematic and hate speech on multiple platforms; he was removed from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Apple removed his show from its podcast platform and his app from its app store. But Jones has proven quite resilient in the face of efforts to deplatform him, and he got a boost when Elon Musk reinstated his Twitter (now X) account late last year.
Regardless of who Jones is working for, the families can continue to chase his future earnings. That's because the bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones' behavior was "intentional and malicious," so he isn't entitled to the clean slate that bankruptcy usually offers.
Mattei said the families "will continue to go after [Jones'] future income and any new Infowars owner acting as a vehicle for Jones' continued control of the business."
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