A new report is shedding light on text message conversations between Fox News' Tucker Carlson and InfoWars influencer Alex Jones.
According to an exclusive report by HuffPost, the timeline of the conversations began at the onset of the pandemic.
HuffPost reporter Sebastian Murdock —who received copies of the conversations from Houston, Texas-based attorney Mark Bankston after he retained them in connection with the Sandy Hook case— offered context into the messages and how Carlson and Jones devolved into the world of conspiracy theories.
Although the two eventually developed a reputation for diminishing the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic by way of conspiracy theories and misinformation, their early conversations appear to contradict their later reporting on the virus.
Initially, there was a report about Carlson warning former President Donald Trump about the severity of the virus; something he actually discussed with Jones. However, their tune quickly changed.
"Yet by the following month, as Trump continued to minimize the seriousness of the virus, the two right-wing media personalities appeared to follow the president's lead, texting conspiracy theories with each other that downplayed the threat even as thousands of Americans were dying daily," Murdoch wrote.
He also highlighted details from a particular conversation between the two that took place on April 27, 2020.
"Early on the morning of April 27, Jones texted Carlson a link to an Infowars article that complained about a pharmaceutical company that was briefly suspended from Twitter after it posted a video that depicted an experimental ultraviolet technology designed to kill the coronavirus," he wrote. "YouTube also removed the video from its website for promoting unsubstantiated claims, but not before the video racked up more than 17 million views."
In a statement to HuffPost, Bankston weighed in on the text messages saying, "We have always favored public transparency in this litigation, and we think it's clear that these conversations between Mr. Jones and one of the nation's most widely watched political pundits are newsworthy and a matter of genuine public interest."
