Alex Jones Reaches Out to Justice Dept. About Jan. 6 Interview


That group, which has ties to Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, often worked to provide security at Stop the Steal rallies alongside the Oath Keepers. On Monday, another Oath Keeper charged in the sedition case released a trove of the group’s internal messages showing that its leader, Mr. Rhodes, enjoyed working with the 1st Amendment Praetorian and called protecting Mr. Jones at pro-Trump rallies “a great feather in our cap.”

During his Infowars show, Mr. Jones went on to discuss his relationship with Caroline Wren, a former Trump campaign aide and fund-raising expert who helped arrange Mr. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse. Mr. Jones said that Ms. Wren was among a group of people who led him “to the back of the stage so we could then go and get around the crowd and go lead the march.”

In its letter issuing a subpoena to Mr. Jones, the House committee said that he, Ms. Wren and Ms. Chafian worked with a donor, Julie Fancelli, an heiress to the Publix supermarket fortune, to provide “80 percent of the funding” for Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse. The committee also noted that in the run-up to Jan. 6, Mr. Jones frequently promoted Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged election and “made statements implying” that he had knowledge of the former president’s plans for his rally.

That day, before Mr. Trump’s speech was finished, Mr. Jones left the Ellipse and marched to the Capitol with Mr. Alexander and Mr. Shroyer, encouraging the crowd around them with a bullhorn. Videos show Mr. Jones shouting chants like, “We’ve only begun to fight” and then receiving word that the building had been breached shortly after 1:30 p.m.

“We got to get this right,” Mr. Jones can be heard telling Mr. Shroyer just before leading the crowd closer to the Capitol. Along the way, the videos show, he led the crowd in chants about “globalists” and declared, “We’re not surrendering.”

The committee has acknowledged that once Mr. Jones reached the Capitol, he told the mob there not to be violent and to gather on the east side of the building, where Mr. Alexander had a permit for a rally, suggesting that Mr. Trump would ultimately meet the group. But Mr. Trump never came to address the crowd and Mr. Jones’s words had the effect of massing crowds on both sides of the Capitol.

The Jan. 6 investigation is only one of the legal troubles Mr. Jones is facing.

On Sunday, three companies affiliated with him, among them Infowars, filed for Chapter 11 protection following his prominent losses in defamation lawsuits in Texas and Connecticut connected to the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, which Mr. Jones had claimed was a hoax.



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