Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks outside the federal courthouse after a June bankruptcy hearing in Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

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David J. Phillip/AP

Alex Jones’ media empire has been sold at auction and the winner is The Onion. No joke.

The satirical news channel bought Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, backed by a group of Connecticut families. Jones said on today’s show that security informed him that he needs to leave the building this morning.

Proceeds from the sale will go toward paying off Jones’ nearly $1.5 billion debt to families of Sandy Hook victims who won two defamation lawsuits against him for spreading false conspiracy theories about the Newtown elementary school shooting , Connecticut in 2012, which Jones said never happened. . He accused the families of being actors and staging the murders of 20 children and six educators in an effort to gain support for gun control, and Jones supporters who believed the lies threatened and harassed the families for years.

“The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, thereby enabling its success,” their attorneys said.

“Our clients knew that real accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones’ ability to spread lies, pain and fear on a massive scale,” said Chris Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs in Connecticut.

The sale, which must still be approved by a bankruptcy court, includes Jones’ studio equipment, his lucrative online nutritional supplement store, domain names, customer lists and some of Jones’ social media accounts, but not his X account.

For his part, Jones responded angrily to his show:

“We’re going out like Vikings with swords in our arms,” he said. He accuses the auction house of manipulating the rules against him for the benefit of the families.

“At the last minute the rules of the auction changed,” he claimed yesterday. “What was going to be an open auction where you could offer (…) more money and top (previous) bids, but now they’ve decided it’s just going to be sealed and there’s one bid and whoever has the highest gets it .”

Jones hoped that a bidder ideologically aligned with him would have bought Infowars and hired him back to continue doing his show. He characterized it as a competition between the “good guys” (his allies) and “the bad guys” who would leave him out of his job. Jones vowed days ago that he won’t miss a second behind the microphone; he said he has received multiple offers to host his show and had a backup studio ready earlier this week.

Jones insisted that the “attacks” on him and his show extended his reach to new heights.

“Infowars is stronger than ever,” Jones stated. The “desperate, continuous, futile attempts to silence us have completely failed and have achieved the opposite,” he said, while also calling for financial aid.

“I do not surrender to tyrants and I will never surrender,” he said, “but we need money to defeat them.” He implored his audience to go to his online store and purchase his new “Trump Patriot Apparel” and limited edition posters that would help support his show.

Jones also showcased his line of vitamins and nutritional supplements, which make up a significant portion of his revenue. He now sells them on a separate website owned by his father – a move that the families’ lawyers are challenging in court, accusing Jones of setting it up as a shell company to protect his income from families.

Jones is still appealing what he calls the “bogus lawsuits” and “show trials.” And he has also threatened to challenge the sale of his company for ‘fraud’.

If approved, the sale would cap a whirlwind but financially successful run for Jones as sole owner of Infowars. He started his career more than 25 years ago at a local radio program in Texas and built his brand as a leading purveyor of conservative conspiracy theories, even claiming that the U.S. government was behind the September 11 attacks. In recent years, Jones has found himself in hot water for problematic and hateful speech on multiple platforms; he was removed from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Apple removed his show from its podcast platform and his app from its app store. But Jones has proven to be quite resilient despite attempts to deplatform himand he got a boost when Elon Musk reinstated Jones’ Twitter account (now X) late last year.

Regardless of who Jones works for, the families can continue to pursue his future income. That’s because the bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones’ conduct was “intentional and malicious,” so he is not entitled to the clean slate that bankruptcy usually provides.

The families “have a hunting license to go after any assets or income of Jones, regardless of source,” said Bruce Markell, a former U.S. bankruptcy judge and now a professor at Northwestern School of Law.