The Onion revives Infowars takeover

Parody outlet The Onion has unveiled a fresh attempt to take control of Infowars, recasting a long-running legal and commercial fight over Alex Jones’s media platform into a new phase driven by state-court liquidation rather than the failed bankruptcy auction that stalled the deal in late 2024. The latest proposal, filed in Texas, would give The Onion an exclusive temporary licence over key Infowars intellectual property while court-supervised asset sales continue, with proceeds intended to benefit families owed more than $1.4 billion in defamation judgments linked to Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

Under the plan now before Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin, The Onion would operate the Infowars brand, website and associated social media channels for an initial six months, with an option to extend. The proposal calls for monthly payments of about $81,000 to cover operating costs while the receiver continues liquidating the assets of Free Speech Systems, the parent company behind Infowars. Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion’s parent group, has signalled the platform would be remade as a parody-driven media property rather than preserved in anything close to its existing form.

That marks a notable shift from the earlier effort, when The Onion emerged as the winning bidder in a bankruptcy auction in November 2024. At the time, its offer was structured with help from Sandy Hook families, whose agreement to accept a share of future recoveries rather than immediate cash helped lift the total value of the package above a rival cash-heavy bid tied to Jones’s allies. Yet the sale unravelled the following month when U. S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that the process had not produced the best outcome for creditors and had left money on the table, even as he stopped short of endorsing allegations of rigging or collusion.

What followed was a messy transition from federal bankruptcy court to state-court enforcement. Disputes among creditor groups slowed the path to a clean sale, and later rulings further complicated how Jones’s business interests could be handled inside bankruptcy. By 2025, the focus had moved back to Texas state court, where a receiver was appointed to take control of Free Speech Systems assets for liquidation. That appointment is central to the new bid because it gives the state process a direct mechanism to authorise a licensing arrangement without having to rerun the same auction structure that collapsed before.

For The Onion, the attraction is partly commercial and partly symbolic. Infowars remains a recognisable digital brand with a loyal audience, a built-in web infrastructure and years of notoriety. Turning that machinery into a comedy-led platform would amount to an inversion of one of the most toxic names in American online media. The company has indicated that comedian Tim Heidecker is among those lined up to help shape the relaunch, underscoring that the plan is not a token rebranding exercise but an effort to build a broader satirical network from the wreckage of Jones’s operation.

For the Sandy Hook families, the proposal carries a harder financial logic. Jones still faces enormous judgments after courts in Connecticut and Texas found him liable for defaming relatives of victims by falsely portraying the massacre as a hoax. A licensing model that keeps the brand active while channelling income to creditors may prove more practical than allowing the property to decay in legal limbo. Even so, the sums involved in the proposed monthly arrangement are tiny compared with the scale of the judgments, which means the broader liquidation of studio assets, equipment, trademarks and any future sale of the business remains the main financial battleground.

Jones has vowed to resist the move and has told supporters he will continue broadcasting independently even if Infowars itself slips from his control. That response points to the wider challenge behind the case: the legal system can seize brands, websites and property, but it cannot easily erase a media personality who has built a following across alternative platforms, livestreams and syndicated channels. Even if The Onion succeeds in taking over the Infowars name, the dispute may simply split the audience between a court-controlled parody site and whatever parallel operation Jones builds next.