Updated November 14, 2024 at 09:37 AM ET
Alex Jones' media empire has been sold at auction, and the winner is The Onion. No Joke.
The satirical news outlet bought Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, backed by a group of Connecticut families. Jones said on today's show that security has notified him he needs to vacate the premises this morning.
Proceeds of the sale will go to paying down Jones' nearly $1.5 billion debt to families of Sandy Hook victims who won two defamation suits against him for spreading false conspiracy theories about the 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which Jones said never happened. He 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 Jones supporters who believed the lies threatened and harassed the families for years.
"The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion's bid, enabling its success," according to their lawyers.
"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," said Chris Mattei, attorney for the Connecticut plaintiffs.
The sale, which still needs to be approved by a bankruptcy court, includes Jones' studio equipment, his lucrative online nutritional supplement store, domain names, customer lists and some of Jones' social media accounts, though not his X account.
Jones, for his part, responded angrily on his show,
"We're going out like vikings with swords in our arms," he said. He's accusing the auction house of rigging rules against him to benefit the families.
"At the last minute, the rules of the auction changed," he alleged yesterday. "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."
Jones was 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. Jones vowed days ago that he won't miss a beat behind the mic; he said he's received multiple offers to host his show and that he had a backup studio ready earlier this week.
Jones insisted the "attacks" on him and on his show were boosting his reach to new highs.
"Infowars is stronger than ever," Jones declared. The "desperate, ongoing, futile attempts to silence us have completely failed and done the opposite," he said, while at the same time pleading for financial help.
"I don't roll over to tyrants and I'll never surrender," he said, "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 are challenging in court, accusing Jones of setting it up as a shell company to shield his revenues from families.
Jones is still appealing what he calls the "fake court cases" and "show trials." And he has also threatened to challenge the sale of his company for any "chicanery."
If approved, the sale would cap a stormy but financially successful run for Jones as sole owner of Infowars. 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 attack. 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 Jones' 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 is not entitled to the clean slate that bankruptcy usually offers.
Copyright 2024 NPR
