The Onion Buys Infowars Out of Bankruptcy

Since the Babylon Bee’s meteoric rise in popularity over the past few years, left-leaning satire publication The Onion has been struggling to remain relevant.

They took a major step toward returning to prominence this week, as they announced Thursday that they had acquired Infowars.com from bankruptcy auction with the help of some Sandy Hook parents.

Sandy Hook parent Robert Parker had this to say.

It remains to be seen whether The Onion will be able to profit off of the Infowars name, or they just purchased the rights as a symbolic middle finger to Jones.

Jones was forced into bankruptcy thanks to a 2022 lawsuit filed by parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims over the fact that Jones called the shooting a “hoax.”

Jones was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the Sandy Hook families. He had lost the cause in a default judgement because he didn’t comply with discovery.

The terms of the purchase have not been disclosed, but it’s reported that the Sandy Hook families increased the size of The Onion’s bid by agreeing to forgo a portion of the money Jones owes them.

Everytown for Gun Safety, an anti-gun non-profit founded in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting to pump out questionable studies promoting gun control, inked a multi-year agreement to advertise on the new Infowars.

Jones has testified in court that he now considers the Sandy Hook massacre to be “100% real”, but has not been given any leeway in atoning for his previous comments.

The deal gives The Onion not only access to the Infowars website, but also “product inventory, customers lists, social media accounts, and intellectual property.” 

The site will be relaunched in January as a parody of the original Infowars, says Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion.

“We thought this would be a hilarious joke,” Mr. Collins said. “This is going to be our answer to this no-guardrails world where there are no gatekeepers and everything’s kind of insane.”