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The Onion’s attempt to acquire Infowars, the far-right web site created by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has been blocked by a Texas bankruptcy judge.
The deal was rejected after a two-day hearing, with the court deciding that the auction for Jones’s media assets had not achieved the best bids for creditors. In November, the US satirical website won the bankruptcy auction for the media business controlled by Jones, the right-wing media influencer.
Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion, said on social media on Wednesday morning that he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, but that the Chicago-based digital media group would “continue to seek a path towards purchasing Infowars in the coming weeks”.
He added that it was disappointing that the process was sent back to the “drawing board with no winner, and no clear path forward for any bidder”.
Infowars was auctioned to pay off settlements to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. Jones owes the families of the victims close to $1.5bn in damages following defamation verdicts, after calling the massacre a hoax.
Jones was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2022 after the Sandy Hook families successfully sued the media host for his repeated false claims about the massacre in which 20 children and six teachers were killed.
The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars had been supported by some of the Connecticut families of the Sandy Hook shooting, who were part of the lawsuit against Jones that led to his bankruptcy.
The families had agreed to forgo a part of the proposed payout to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, but this waiver did not prove enough to convince the Texan judge of the financial merits of the offer.
The Onion had last month agreed to acquire Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, which includes its website, customers, social media accounts, production equipment and studio in Austin, Texas, trademarks and video archive.
The judge also did not accept a rival bid from First United American Companies, which is affiliated with Jones, and instead instructed the bankruptcy trustee to decide on the next steps after negotiating further with creditors.
The Texan judge deemed the decision to sell to The Onion as a “good-faith” error, but added that the process should have maintained competition between The Onion’s bid and a rival offer from the group linked to Jones until the end.
In a video on social media, Jones said that “finally a judge followed the law . . . they are trying to destroy us and destroy free speech. The judge just ruled in our favour. We believe crimes were committed . . . of bid rigging, or price fixing and collusion.”
The judge rejected Jones’s claims that the auction was undermined by collusion between the bankruptcy trustee, the Connecticut families and the Onion bid.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Connecticut families, said they were “disappointed” by the decision, but added it did not “change the fact that, soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes”.
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