Last August, during one of a series of trials that left online outrage merchant Alex Jones owing the families of Sandy Hook victims more than a billion dollars in damages, it was revealed that his lawyer had “messed up” and provided the families’ lawyer with his entire phone records.
They landed with a satisfying thud of schadenfreude, and allowed the complainants to demonstrate Jones’ frequent demonstrable lies under oath.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch has delved deeply into them, reviewing more than 22,000 text messages Jones sent and received between August 2019 and May 2020. The tranche paints a grim picture of what it is to be Alex Jones. I mean, even grimmer than we already knew it was.
Here’s some of the most revealing correspondence the via three parts of the series so far released.
‘I am in hell’
The first part delves into the truly dire state of Jones’ personal life. There is a long series of texts to his father, David, describing how “crazy mixed up” and “freaked out” Jones is, seemingly over the litigation he is facing:
And nothing can stop it
It seams
It’s like gravity A black hole
David does not reply.
There are also several instances of him texting various employees asking to be brought a bottle of vodka during the day and the depiction of his relationship with his wife, Erika Wulff Jones. The texts appear to confirm a Rolling Stone piece alleging that Jones had hired a former Blackwater mercenary to spy on his wife, while he was having an affair with a woman who is recorded in his phone under the alias “Pat Johnson”. (She sent him several links to far-right websites, presumably their equivalent of sexting.)
The series reveals several flurries of texts from Jones to his wife, such as a thread of 10 unreplied-to texts, wherein he tells her she hates their family, that she is “sick” and demands she answer her phone.
‘BTW — I love the Tank’
Jones traded several texts with former Nixon adviser and Trump megaphone Roger Stone while the latter was on trial for lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering. Stone was particularly impressed by Jones’ “Tank”, the armoured vehicle Jones sometimes drives to events. The most baffling part of the exchange is when Stone refers to their texts possibly being monitored and Jones eventually responds with a picture of his wife in her underwear.
Stone does not reply.
‘We can build a media empire together’
Founder of the far-right Proud Boys gang Gavin McInnes appears to have taken on the role of mentoring Jones’ son Rex, planning appearances for Rex on McInnes’ website (which don’t appear to have happened) and appearing on a show hosted by the younger Jones. On this show, McInnes parrots a made-up statistic about the frequency of false rape accusations and Rex talks about his battle with pornography addiction.
Incidentally, the text record shows that Jones, who rails against pornography on his show, frequently sent his contacts links to hardcore sexual material. McInnes and Jones appear to have had an unspecified falling out (another recurring theme of the texts is how often Jones falls out with the people in his orbit):
Hey man, let’s not throw this all away because a kid made a silly mistake. We can build a media empire together. There will be hiccups and they won’t thwart us.
Jones doesn’t reply.
‘I gave you credit for being right about a lot of shit including these Chinese monkey pig hybrids’
Of course Jones and Joe Rogan are friends. There are a lot of texts between them in Hatewatch‘s series, many referring to yet another unspecified falling out. “I am a new person and do value our old friendship and would like to regain your respect!” Jones texts Rogan at one point, worrying Rogan may be telling people about Jones’ drinking. Jones adds: “I am sorry I went to far before and ask you not to hurt me for it…”
Rogan responds: “I didn’t say anything bad about you, in fact I gave you credit for being right about a lot of shit including these Chinese monkey pig hybrids. might have mentioned you drinking, but it was just as an excuse for you. If you don’t want me to mention it again I won’t…”
‘He lives in Transylvania and is a really good guest’
Oh yes, the Rogan stuff gets worse. Jones’ tries to convince Rogan to interview Andrew Tate in 2019, a man whose public achievement at the time was a steaming pile of violent misogynistic rhetoric (he is currently in a Romanian prison on charges of rape and human trafficking).
Rogan didn’t go ahead with it, although he did his standard “it’s all a bit of an act”/”he says something stupid things but some wise things” take on the matter in January.
The series will continue on February 9.
