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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones faced another setback in court as a Texas district judge ruled that his Infowars platform could be put up for sale again. The decision follows a 2024 ruling to halt an earlier sale due to concerns about the auction process.
Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled on Wednesday, Aug. 13, that Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, was to be placed in the hands of a court-appointed receiver and that the company’s assets would be used to pay the $1.3 billion in legal judgments.
In 2022, the courts ruled that Jones defamed the families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, in which six adults and 20 children were killed. He made repeated false claims that the massacre was a “hoax” staged as part of a government plot to confiscate guns from Americans.
Gamble’s order paves the way for The Onion to try yet again to purchase Infowars and its assets.
In December 2024, the satirical news site initially won the court-ordered auction for Infowars, but a U.S. bankruptcy judge blocked the sale, stating that the bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.After the court’s latest ruling, The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins posted on the social media platform Bluesky on Wednesday, Aug. 13, “We’re working on it. That’s all I can say for now.”
Reuters and USA TODAY’s Jeanine Santucci contributed to this report.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
