Alex Jones, famous for his outbursts on the radio show he hosts, Infowars, has faced a lot of backlash over the past few years, especially surrounding his coverage of the Sandy Hook School Shooting. Back in 2012, Jones “questioned” the events of the shooting that led to six staff members of the school and six children dead. This “questioning” led to his fans and his staff harassing grieving families relentlessly.
This has led to two major lawsuits against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, which owns and hosts Infowars as well as its online store. This lawsuit had dragged on for years with Jones and the Infowars team refusing to share documents and cooperate with discovery in both cases. Because of his behavior, he was found guilty by default and was told that the case would go to a trial in which the jury would have to determine how much money he owned the family instead of determining his guilt. After both cases were finalized, Jones and his company owed the families over 1.5 billion dollars.
Jones tried to protect his finances by declaring bankruptcy which backfired due to a federal bankruptcy judge ruling that the process will not shield him from the money he owes to the families.
Recently, everything the Free Speech Systems owned was put up for auction. The Onion, a satirical website and newspaper founded in Madison, WI, won the auction with the help of the Sandy Hook families, who wanted Infowars to be bought by one group and not sold off piece by piece.
The Onion had plans to shut down Jones’ Infowars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators.
“The Onion is proud to acquire Infowars, and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site’s users with lies until they fork over their cold, hard cash,” said The Onion CEO Ben Collins. “Or Bitcoin. We will also accept Bitcoin.”
However, things have become difficult for The Onion as Jones and his lawyers call the whole affair “rigged” and “biased” and with the help of Attorneys for X Corp., the firm established by Elon Musk to take over Twitter, it seems like he will have the resources he need to drag this out if needed.
The judge overseeing the process has called for a new hearing because of transparency issues over the acquisition of Infowars which is scheduled for this upcoming week.
