The U.S. Department of Justice, in their ongoing investigation into the January 6th attacks on the Capitol this year, has requested the emails and texts of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, host of the radio show The Alex Jones Show and owner of the far-right fake news website, Infowars.
Alex Jones appeared in court this week in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by the victims' parents. The parents of the murdered six-year-old Jesse Lewis, Neil Heslin and Scarlet Lewis are seeking at least $150m for Jones’ insistence on his show that the Sandy Hook shooting, where 20 children and six teachers were shot, was a hoax perpetrated by gun control advocates.
The Jan. 6 committee first subpoenaed Jones in November, demanding a deposition and documents related to his efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election, his efforts in promoting and encouraging Trump supporters to converge on Washington, DC and information on his role in the January 6th attack, when Jones led a crowd of protestors to the Capital and stood among them on the steps.
This is part of the House January 6th committee’s investigation into Donald Trump’s role in the attack. According to sources, they are pursuing two potential crimes; seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government preceding and potential fraud associated with the false-electors scheme.
This comes at a hectic time for the investigation, as it was revealed this week that senior members of the Pentagon deleted their communications around the January 6th attacks on Congress. The Department of Defense and the army admitted in court filings to a non-partisan watchdog group that the text messages of senior Trump officials to their personnel were deleted after the administration handover, including text messages from January 6th. The Pentagon’s slow response to the Capitol attack remains the subject of widespread speculation and investigation.
There was already controversy over the deletion of communications essential to piecing together the events that led to such a violent insurrection by the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, and it has since been uncovered that 10 Secret Service staff had wiped their phones of all messages.
Given how many pieces of vital communications appear to have been deleted, Jones’ texts and emails could be invaluable in revealing who was involved in organizing the attack and how much Trump knew about it. In the official subpoena letter, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the January 6th committee, said Jones helped organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse that preceded the insurrection. He also wrote that Jones "made statements implying that you knew of the plans of President Trump concerning the rally."
The decision on whether to prosecute Trump will ultimately fall to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. The committee sessions that started this summer are in recess and will return in September. The current trial is the first of three to determine how much Alex Jones will have to pay multiple Sandy Hook families who sued him and won default judgments.
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