The Onion relaunches Infowars as legal wrangling continues

The Onion is one step closer to taking over Infowars.

The satirical news site on Monday launched a rebrand of right-wing commentator Alex Jones’ controversial platform under a licensing deal that the Onion agreed to with a court-appointed administrator who is currently overseeing Infowars.

The administrator, Gregory Milligan, has asked a Texas district judge to approve the agreement. Under the terms, first reported by The New York Times, the Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and the Infowars brand for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

On Monday afternoon, The Onion posted a short clip to social media that featured its onion logo trademark inside the “o” in Infowars, alongside a satirical op-ed by Global Tetrahedron’s fake founder, Bryce Tetraeder.

“With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars,” Onion CEO Ben Collins wrote in a post on Bluesky on Monday. (Collins previously covered disinformation and conspiracy theories for NBC News.)

Creative direction of the rebrand is being led by comedian Tim Heidecker.

Representatives for Jones and The Onion did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The deal will not be official until the judge approves it, and Jones can appeal any ruling.

Jones grew to become one of the most well-known alternative media personalities with his Infowars brand, which he launched in 1999. The operation primarily centered around false and often bizarre claims about grand conspiracies and government wrongdoing.

But the fate of Infowars has been in limbo ever since Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022 after a jury awarded $50 million to the parents of a Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victim.

A second defamation suit involving Sandy Hook parents resulted in the largest-ever financial penalty in such a case, $1.4 billion. Jones has falsely claimed the 2012 elementary school shooting, in which 20 students and six adults were killed, was a hoax.

In 2024, a bankruptcy judge set up an auction for the Infowars site and brand, attracting just two bidders: a company representing Jones, and one representing The Onion. A bankruptcy trustee and the families initially agreed to accept the Onion’s bid despite a potentially lower valuation. Jones and his attorneys said the bid was faulty, and the trustee decided to move the case to Texas where Jones’ initial defamation suit occurred.

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