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After a judge on Thursday ordered an evidentiary hearing into The Onion’<\/em>s winning bid to purchase Infowars<\/em><\/a>, Alex Jones\u2019 site resumed operations and claimed the sale has been blocked. But Onion<\/em> CEO Ben Collins countered this in an update posted on Bluesky<\/a> and X on Saturday, writing, \u201cWe left the hearing with clear next steps to complete the sale.\u201d According to Collins, a court date has been set for a week from Monday, when the process is expected to be completed, and Infowars <\/em>asked for permission to continue publishing in the meantime. \u201cThe long and short of it: We won the auction and \u2014 you’re not going to believe this \u2014 the previous InfoWars folks aren’t taking it well,\u201d Collins wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Thursday, the person overseeing the auction told us that The Onion<\/em>\u2019s bid for InfoWars<\/em>, along with the Connecticut Sandy Hook families, won,\u201d Collins wrote in the thread. \u201cWe haven\u2019t heard anything that changed that \u2014 except, of course, from the guys currently running InfoWars, doing InfoWars stuff.\u201d Jones has unsurprisingly called the auction \u201crigged,\u201d and in a livestream on X said that lawyers for Elon Musk\u2019s social media site have gotten involved and attended the hearing, Mother Jones<\/em><\/a> reported.<\/p>\n The Onion <\/em>only went up against one other bidder in the auction for Infowars<\/em>: First United American Companies, which is associated with a website that sells Jones\u2019 supplements. The company reportedly bid $3.5 million<\/a>. The dollar amount of Global Tetrahedron\u2019s (The Onion<\/em>\u2019s parent company) bid has not been disclosed, but it\u2019s been backed by families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims. Per Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>, trustee Christopher Murray, who is liquidating Jones\u2019 estate, said these families have \u201cagreed to waive their potential recovery and give it to all other unsecured creditors\u201d that Jones owes.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a status conference with the judge overseeing the auction on Thursday, shortly after we were deemed winners,\u201d Collins, who formerly covered disinformation and online extremism as a reporter for NBC News<\/em>, wrote in the thread on Saturday. \u201cThe judge had some questions about process and some assets. We\u2019re glad he\u2019s doing that, since our bid with the families is clearly the best and transparency is even better.\u201d He added further down: \u201cWe expected all of this, obviously. Buying this site was always going to be fun later on, but annoying right away. The fun part is still to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Collins\u2019 plan for Infowars<\/em> is for it to \u201crelaunch as the dumbest website on the internet.\u201d The nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety will reportedly be the sole advertiser<\/a> at launch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n