The Onion, a satirical publication that skewers newsmakers and current events, said on Thursday that it had won a bankruptcy auction to acquire Infowars, a website founded and operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But in a twist all too typical of six years of often-chaotic litigation, within hours the bankruptcy judge temporarily halted the deal.

The Onion said its bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems. The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking “weird internet personalities” like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.

A lawyer for the Onion said the deal was secure. But during an emergency hearing hours after a triumphant announcement, Judge Christopher Lopez of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston put a hold on the sale until a hearing early next week.

Judge Lopez cited concerns about a lack of transparency in the secret bidding process and a need to clarify which assets the winners are buying. One of the assets in dispute is Mr. Jones’s account on X.

The auction drew only two bidders. Walter J. Cicack, a Houston lawyer representing First United American Companies, a business associated with an online supplement store that bears Mr. Jones’s name, bid $3.5 million in cash for Infowars’ website, related websites and Infowars’ lucrative supplements business. In the Houston hearing, Mr. Cicack said the court-appointed trustee who managed the sale had informed him that he was the “backup bidder” and had lost. But he was not given an opportunity to increase his bid and was not told the amount of the winning bid, he said.

The Onion group did not release the terms of the sale, but in the hearing it emerged that it had offered less in cash than First United. It won by including a “credit bid,” a pledge by Sandy Hook families who had sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut to forgo for now collecting on a portion of the damages due them.