Judge Lopez said the court-appointed arbitrator who oversaw the auction made a “good faith mistake.”
Instead of quickly soliciting final bids at auction, they should have encouraged more bidding between The Onion and a company linked to Mr Jones’ nutritional supplement business, he said.
“It should have been opened up to everyone,” Judge Lopez said.
In the 1990s, Jones was a fringe personality hosting a broadcast in Austin, Texas, and later amassed an audience of millions through a mixture of opinion, conjecture and outright fabrication.
The company makes most of its money through its online store selling vitamins and other products.
The company and Jones’ financial difficulties stem from broadcasts made after the December 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The attack killed 20 young children and six school staff.
In the aftermath of the murders, Jones and his on-air guests have repeatedly questioned whether the massacre actually happened, offering conspiracy theories about whether the killings were faked or carried out by government agents.
At one point, Jones called the attack a “gigantic hoax” and in 2015 said, “Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake with actors, I think, manufactured… I knew they had actors there, but I thought they killed some real kids and it just shows how brave they are that they clearly used actors.”
Believers in the conspiracy theory network promoted by Jones harassed the families of Sandy Hook victims, in some cases sending them photos of dead children or gravestones and posting their personal information online.
Some traveled to Newtown to “investigate” and several people were arrested in connection with stalking the victims.
Jones later admitted the killings were real and insisted his statements were covered by US free speech protections.
But relatives of the victims won defamation judgments against Jones and his company for his false statements.
He filed for bankruptcy in 2022 when the Sandy Hook case went to trial, and in June 2024 a judge ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets. That included a multimillion-dollar ranch, other property, cars, boats and guns, totaling about $8.6 million, according to the court filing.
