The Onion’s bid to take over Alex Jones’ Infowars has been blocked again, this time by a Texas court order that paused the proceedings until a new hearing on May 28. The fresh delay leaves the future of the conspiracy outlet unsettled even after The Onion won the bankruptcy auction in 2024.
Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion, said the company wants to “mock the very capricious and unjust system we are currently experiencing all throughout America.” He also said, “Every delay in this process directly impacts their ability to receive justice.”
The latest pause comes after The Onion reached a deal earlier this year to gain temporary control of Infowars’ website, trademark and related intellectual property while liquidation continued. By early May, Infowars had shuttered, but the legal fight over who controls what remains active and has now been pushed back once more.
Jones launched Infowars in 1999 and later folded it into Free Speech Systems. He and his media empire filed for bankruptcy after a $1.4 billion defamation judgment over his repeated claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. The shooting killed 20 children and six others, and the judgment became the financial and legal core of the bankruptcy case.
The Onion’s bid was backed by Sandy Hook families, and the company said it planned to give the profits directly to victims of the school shooting. Collins said, “Our goal is simple: to take a platform that caused real harm and build something better.”
The fight over Infowars has also been cast by The Onion as something larger than a simple asset sale. In a message tied to the deal, the outlet’s fictional owner Bryce P. Tetraeder said “panic and capital feed on each other” in “modern-day America,” underscoring the satirical pitch behind its bid. The company has called the takeover “one of the better jokes we’ve ever told,” but the court battles around it have been anything but funny for the families involved.
What happens next is now tied to the May 28 hearing, which will determine whether the latest Texas blockage holds or whether The Onion can move ahead with a takeover that was first approved in bankruptcy court, then temporarily stayed, and now delayed again.
