A Texas judge halted The Onion’s successful bid for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars network over concerns about the bidding process and what the provocateur calls a “rigged, bogus auction.”

The offer was approved by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary victims who prevailed in a 2022 defamation lawsuit against Jones for $1.4 billion, according to the satirical news outlet.

However, Judge Christopher M. Lopez stated that the purpose of the meeting was to determine whether the auction organizers conducted “a fair and complete process.” He was speaking at a status conference held in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The judge stated that “no one should feel comfortable” about what happened, adding: “I personally don’t care who wins the auction, what matters to me is the process and transparency,” according to Daily Mail. The date of the hearing has not yet been announced.

Also read: Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction with help from Sandy Hook families

Jones is upset about Judge’s decision

Jones has been furious about the exact procedure since the satirical news site’s winning bid was revealed on Thursday.

Later, an angry Jones claimed in two videos uploaded to social media that the auction is not yet official.

“(My lawyers) completely agreed: they have never seen anything like this. “This was a private, secret sale…actually illegal, this is a prima facie bankruptcy crime disguised as an auction that was not an auction,” Jones said.

“The people didn’t even pay real money, they paid some weird FIAT thing that wasn’t agreed to by the judge’s order and then they let the corporate media say that The Onion had bought Infowars,” he added.

According to him, the judge informed the curator that it was “not an auction” and that he did not grant the curator permission to do so.

Jones then took aim at the “Deep State” for its “unprecedented” behavior, claiming that the people behind The Onion had “done nothing.”

Stressing that anyone “thinking about Infowars” was closed, he claimed: “You are in for a rude awakening.”

Just two hours later, he provided more updates on the process from the Infowars studios. “The headlines you see everywhere that The Onion bought Infowars today are not true.”

He expressed his anger at the curator’s refusal to accept the highest bid, as well as their refusal to announce the winner and the possibility of using credit during the auction.

Jones said, “They bought my company at a rigged, bogus auction that didn’t even happen with my money that doesn’t exist.”

He further claimed that the auction winners had shut down his radio and TV stations and even ‘hijacked’ his website.

Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in late 2022 after families in Connecticut and Texas triumphed over his allegations that the school shooting that killed 20 children and six adults was a hoax. This was the reason for the auction.

According to The New York Times, Infowars will be relaunched in January as a new parody called The Onion.