Nearly a year and a half after its prior effort to acquire the right wing conspiracy-centric brand Infowars was nixed by a bankruptcy judge, The Onion is moving forward with a new effort to take over the company and secure justice for the families of Sandy Hook victims.
On Monday The Onion and its parent company Global Tetrahedron announced a licensing deal for the company’s brand names and IP, including its website.
“Finally. It took 17 months and hundreds of hours in courtrooms, but America’s Finest News Source has entered into an agreement to operate America’s Source Of Disinformation For Sovereign Citizens Who Reject The Idea Of Child Support,” The Onion wrote in an announcement about the deal.
“This is the culmination of a two-year-long effort to get some justice for the Sandy Hook families,” Onion CEO Ben Collins wrote on LinkedIn. “After a mountain of threats and nonsense, InfoWars will be ours.”
The new arrangement will still need to be approved by a judge.
Infowars was founded by Alex Jones, the right wing media personality, who operated it for more than 25 years up until its bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy proceedings were the result of the defamation lawsuit filed by the families of the Sandy Hook victims against Jones. The latter had claimed that the 2012 school shooting was a “hoax” and was staged by actors. Several families successfully sued Jones for defamation and emotional damages, and in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. Jones declared bankruptcy in 2022, leading to the selling off of his assets to pay his creditors.
The licensing deal will see The Onion pay a $81,000 monthly fee to the bankruptcy manager for the brand for six months, with the option to extend it for another six months. Collins added on Bluesky that comedian Tim Heidecker would join the company as Infowars’ creative director.
The Onion, now under the ownership of tech exec Jeff Lawson, has been rebooting itself in a bid to return to its subversive comedy roots.
