The announcement means a legal victory for the controversial media personality Alex Jones, who for years spread the lie that the massacre at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut in 2012 was fake. 20 children and 6 teachers were murdered in the incident.
The relatives of the schoolchildren sued Jones for defamation and eventually received damages of 1.5 billion dollars. When Jones went personally bankrupt in 2022, Infowars was auctioned off and the platform was bought by the satirical website The Onion, with the support of the relatives of the Sandy Hook victims.
The Onion bid 1.75 million dollars for the site and won the auction, but another company with ties to Jones offered twice as much to buy the site. This has raised questions about whether the auction was conducted fairly.
Judge Christopher Lopez in the bankruptcy case in Houston is now rejecting how the process has been handled and is referring the matter to the bankruptcy trustee to take the next step.
The Onion had planned to run Infowars as a kind of satire of right-wing conspiracy websites, but it is now unclear whether those plans will go ahead.
"Today's announcement is a major disappointment for us, but The Onion will continue to help the Sandy Hook families to reach a positive solution that gives them an opportunity to put an end to the nightmare they have been through," says Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion's owner in a statement on social media.
