The Onion wins bid for InfoWars assets

CNN
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Satirical news site The Onion won the auction to acquire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars.

The Onion’s bid was supported by the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and a first responder. It will also have an exclusive advertising deal with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. CNN was the first to report that the humor website had participated in the bidding.

The purchase acquires the company’s intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory and certain social media accounts, as well as the production equipment used to put Jones on the air. The size of the offer was not disclosed.

“The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars and we look forward to continuing its history of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” said The Onion CEO Ben Collins. “Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin.”

To make the bid work, the families “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success,” the families said in a statement.

“After surviving unimaginable losses with courage and integrity, they rejected Jones’ hollow offer of allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because it would have put other families at risk,” said Chris Mattei. lawyer for the families and partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.

In a video posted to X, Alex Jones denounced the sale, claiming it was unconstitutional and urging fans to follow him on new social media.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to stay here until they get in there and turn off the lights. I’ll say, ‘Where’s your court order?'” he said.

Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, said in part: “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 justice we have long waited and fought for.”

Everything at Infowars, from the microphones to the email lists, was up for auction to help pay the nearly $1.5 billion Jones owes the Sandy Hook families after being found guilty of defamation for calling the massacre in 2012 for a hoax.

Jones’ allies had also submitted bids, with a source telling CNN that one of those bids was in the “seven-figure” range. Jones had said on his show that “good guys” had tried to bid on Infowars to keep him in place, but that even if they fail, he will continue to broadcast on new platforms and new social media accounts.

This is a developing story and will be updated.