Chicago satirical news publication The Onion has been named the winner of Alex Jones’ Infowars in a bankruptcy auction supported by the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims to whom Jones owes more than 1 defamation conviction billion dollars for calling the massacre a hoax. .

The purchase would hand over Jones’ company, which has sold conspiracies and disinformation for decades, to a humor site that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody. Jones’ bankruptcy judge ordered a hearing for next week after Jones and his lawyers raised questions about how the auction was conducted.

Hours after the announcement of the sale Thursday, the Infowars website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.

“The liquidation of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long waited for and fought for,” said Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, in a statement provided by his lawyers.

The Onion’s bid was for the conspiracy theory platform website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sale price.

Lawyers for Jones and an Infowars affiliate that submitted a $3.5 million bid said they expected a round of bidding to take place on Wednesday, in which potential buyers could bid among themselves. They alleged that the administrator overseeing the auction changed the process just days before and only opened the sealed bids that had been submitted. Judge Christopher Lopez of Houston said he has concerns. The exact day and time for the hearing has not yet been set.

The Onion, which has been based in Chicago since 2012, was acquired in April from G/O Media by a newly formed company here called Global Tetrahedron.

The satirical station — which wears the banner “America’s Best News Source” — was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making Jones a frequent target of mocking articles. Mass shootings in the US, such as the Sandy Hook attack, are often followed by The Onion publishing slightly updated versions of one of its best-known recurring satire pieces: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ says Only Nation Where This It happens regularly.”

“No price would be too high for such an abundance of goods and malleable minds,” The Onion said in his satirical post on sale. “And yet, in a stroke of luck, a formidable group of special interests overtook the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a bargain: less than a trillion dollars. .”

In his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale in court and calling it “a total attack on free speech.” He later announced that his show was closed. Jones, who had been telling listeners for days that he had a new studio set up nearby, then resumed his show from the new location, streaming live on his X accounts.

The Chicago-based Onion consulted on the auction with some of the Sandy Hook families who have sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas, attorneys for the families said.

“Our clients knew that true accountability meant ending Infowars and ending Jones’ ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale,” said Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the families.

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, told The Associated Press in a video interview that he will relaunch the Infowars site in January with satire aimed at conspiracy theorists and right-wing figures, as well as educational information about gun violence. prevention from the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Collins did not disclose the sale price.

“We thought it would be a really funny joke if we bought this, probably one of the best jokes we’ve ever told,” Collins said. “The (Sandy Hook) families have decided that they will actually join our bid, support our bid, to try to get us over the finish line. Because at the end of the day, we or Alex Jones could either continue this site unabated with virtually no punishment for what it has done to these families over the years, or we could make a stupid, stupid site and have decided to do the second thing.”

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the organization will be the exclusive advertiser on the new Infowars site.

“When you think of the unmitigated harm that Alex Jones and Infowars brought to the families of Sandy Hook, it is only poetic justice that now Everytown and The Onion together will open a new chapter on Infowars and a chapter that is dedicated to the issue of gun safety. ” he told the AP.

Jones did not lose his personal X account, which has more than 3 million followers, in the auction. But the bankruptcy judge decides whether his personal accounts can be sold at the trustee’s request.

Sandy Hook families sued Jones and his company for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax staged by actors crisis to boost more gun control. The parents and children of many of the victims testified that they had been traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats from his followers. Jones has since admitted the shooting was “100 percent real.”

The Onion bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, providing highly regarded and universally respected coverage of national, international and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers. Recent headlines have included: “Trump boys fight over who can lead foreign policy meetings,” “Oklahoma law calls for Ten Commandments to be displayed in every womb” and “Man forgetting difference between meteorites, meteorites fight to describe what just killed them. Dog.”

Sealed bids for the private auction were opened on Wednesday. The bankruptcy trustee named First United American Companies, which is affiliated with one of Jones’ product sales sites, as a backup bidder if the sale to The Onion falls through.