The Onion’s plan to turn over control of InfoWars to comedian Tim Heidecker has been delayed temporarily after a Texas court paused the takeover of Alex Jones’ platform.
The satirical news outlet sought approval of the InfoWars deal Thursday, but an emergency motion filed by Jones’ lawyers was approved by the Texas Third Court of Appeals, the Associated Press reports, with a hearing set for May 28.
Lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook families — who assumed ownership of InfoWars and worked out the Onion deal following their civil case against Jones — filed their own appeal of the emergency motion to the Supreme Court of Texas in an effort to speed up the process.
“This newly insane, unprecedented legal stalling does nothing but delay our deal with the receiver to take control of InfoWars. We now expect new traps in Alex Jones’ amoral war to deny paying the Sandy Hook families, but we’re freshly surprised by the U.S. legal system’s appetite to put up with it,” The Onion CEO Ben Collins wrote on social media Thursday.
“I am so sorry for the delay. We’re trying as hard as we can while Alex Jones invents new avenues to subvert justice with the appeasement of a series of ultimately scared people who should know better. I’m going to keep fighting for the Sandy Hook families, who haven’t seen a penny from Alex Jones.”
Mark Bankston, one of the Sandy Hook families’ lawyers, said Thursday, “As far as the world is concerned, Infowars is dead. Everybody knows that. [Jones is] trying to keep the bloated corpse of a media organization alive. It’s all a joke. Everybody knows where this is going.”
“The Sandy Hook families have endless patience and over $1 billion dollars in judgments against Alex Jones and Infowars,” said attorney Chris Mattei. “His desperate legal maneuvering can do nothing to stop the inevitable closure of InfoWars, and we call on the Texas courts to recognize that the families, whose final judgments have been blessed by the United States Supreme Court, are entitled to a speedy and just resolution.”
Jones himself declared victory Thursday on what he called “the last official InfoWars show,” as the court-appointed receiver of Jones’ assets had stopped paying the bills for the Austin studio where Infowars is filmed. “He’s not paying the bills, like the rent or the Internet, the satellite, so we have to shut down,” Jones said, adding that his show would move to a new studio and app in the near future.
In an interview with Rolling Stone after the Onion’s announcement of Heidecker’s creative director role at Infowars, the comedian said of the takeover, “We’re waiting for this last judgment so we have everything kind of set up to go live. For the time being, it’s all set. The amount of work going into this is unbelievable, with just the tech side of it, and we’ve got a lot of really funny content waiting in the wings. Whenever that happens, whether it’s next week or in a month, or however long — things always take longer than you hope, especially with the law. So we don’t really have a date, but we’re hoping that by the end of May or sooner.”