Texas appeals court pauses The Onion's purchase of Infowars

AUSTIN (CN) — A Texas appeals court decision has left The Onion’s proposed licensing deal for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars platform up in the air, just hours before a planned state court hearing to finalize the deal.

A three-judge panel issued a short unsigned order Wednesday night blocking any turnover of assets to the court-appointed receiver, in effect killing any deal the receiver could make with the satirical news website.

The Onion, the receiver and the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims announced the licensing deal on April 20. The deal would see the satire site spin up its own version of Infowars and bring on comedians like Tim Heidecker to run new programming. Their new Infowars site has been online since the announcement and already has affiliated merchandise available with The Onion’s new logo, which replaces the “O” in Infowars with the paper’s onion logo,

In exchange, The Onion would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of licensing fees over a six-month period, with options of renewing the licensing deal or an outright sale after that time. All funds from the licensing and merchandising would go towards the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, to whom Jones owes more than a billion dollars in defamation damages for his inflammatory remarks about the shooting.

Jones, meanwhile, would still be able to run his own unaffiliated show, just without the Infowars brand he built starting in 1999.

But under the appeals court’s order, the court-appointed receiver no longer has control over the website assets that The Onion would be licensing. This leaves the planned deal in a legal gray area until the lower court can issue a new order.

The Onion, through its parent company Global Tetrahedron LLC, had tried to buy up the Infowars brand once before in a federal bankruptcy court auction in late 2024. But the federal bankruptcy judge tossed the results of the auction after the court-appointed trustee would not agree on a fixed value for The Onion’s deal.

After the April 20 announcement, Jones and his attorneys swiftly filed appeals in both state and federal court, though they are now asking the federal judge for that appeal to dismiss their own request following the order from the Third Court of Appeals.

The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron LLC, the receiver and the families have appealed to the Texas Supreme Court to overturn Wednesday’s decision.

Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, remained confident that his site could take over Infowars soon despite the appeals court’s order, claiming on social media that Jones’ Infowars site will still shut down around midnight on Friday.

Jones himself conceded even if The Onion doesn’t take over Infowars in the coming days, he will still have to leave the studio Thursday night.

The Thursday afternoon hearing before Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble still began at the scheduled time. But with the Texas Supreme Court’s response to the appeals still pending, she could not take any new actions.

The appeals court has given Gamble until May 29 to file a new order in the case. A new hearing is set for May 28.