The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.

The purchase turns over Jones’ company, which for decades has peddled in conspiracy and misinformation, to a humor website that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody. Within hours of the sale’s announcement Thursday, Infowars’ website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.

The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sales price.

The satirical outlet — which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead — was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making Jones a frequent target of mocking articles. Mass shootings in the U.S., such as the Sandy Hook attack, are often followed by The Onion publishing slightly updated versions of one of its most well-known recurring pieces: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

“No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds,” The Onion said in a satirical post about the sale. “And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.”

On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale in court and calling it “a total attack on free speech.” He later announced his show was being shut down. Jones, who had told listeners for days that he had a new studio set up nearby, then resumed his broadcast from the new location, carrying them live on his accounts on X.

He claimed the takeover by The Onion was premature because the bankruptcy judge had not yet signed off on the winning bid.

A Jones-affiliated company named by the bankruptcy trustee as the backup bid requested an immediate status conference, citing “the apparent defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency, and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders.” A hearing was scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Houston.

The Onion, based in Chicago, consulted on the bidding with some of the Sandy Hook families that sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas, lawyers for the families said.