The January 6 committee is preparing to subpoena Alex Jones’ texts and emails that were accidentally sent to an attorney for the Sandy Hook victims, according to a report.
Attorney Mark Bankston revealed he had mistakenly received a trove of thousands of Jones’ private communications during the Infowars founder’s defamation trial on Wednesday.
Within minutes of the stunning revelation, the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol began preparing to subpoena the messages, a source told Rolling Stone.
“We fully intend on cooperating with law-enforcement and US government officials interested in seeing these materials,” Mr Bankston told the court.
Mr Jones riled up a crowd of rioters during the assault on the Capitol in Washington DC in January last year, pushing the false claim that the election had been stolen.
In a video posted to the Infowars website, he told the crowd: “We need to understand we’re under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war-footing.”
Mr Jones also made an inflammatory speech on 5 January at a Stop the Steal protest in Washington DC.
“I don’t know how this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they’ve got one,” he told the crowd, in a video published by Media Matters.
The select committee issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from the notorious conpiracy theorist in November 2021.
It’s unclear what information he provided for the committee. In April, he said that he had offered to speak with the committee in exchange for immunity.
The January 6 committee also subpoenaed close Trump ally and political dirty trickster Roger Stone.
Mr Bankston, representing representing Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis in their ongoing defamation trial against Jones, dropped the bombshell revelation while cross-examining Jones on Wednesday.
“Did you know 12 days ago your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years?” Mr Bankston asked him.
He said Mr Jones’ attorney Andino Reynal did not take any steps to identify the texts as privileged.
The data file containing Jones’ messages is several hundred gigabytes in size and goes back at least 27 months, Mr Bankston told the court.
The texts from Mr Jones’ phone revealed he earned as much as $800,000 a day from the Inofwars site in 2018.
He went on to accuse Jones of lying about not having any text messages relating to Sandy Hook during the discovery phase of the lawsuit.
A jury will begin deliberating soon how much Jones must pay Mr Heslin and Ms Lewis, who are seeking $150m.
