The sale of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars website to parody news platform The Onion has been rejected by a US bankruptcy judge. After a two-day hearing, Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that an auction for Infowars did not result in the best bids possible. The Onion said the bid was secured with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5bn (£1.18bn) defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumours about the massacre. Judge Lopez said the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee who ran the auction made “a good-faith error” and should have encouraged more bidding. Jones was a fringe figure broadcasting in Austin, Texas in the 1990s and later built an audience of millions with a mix of opinion, speculation and outright fabrication. The company makes most of its money through an online shop selling vitamins and other products. The company’s – and Jones’s – financial difficulties stem from broadcasts made after the December 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty young children and six school staff were killed in the attack.
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