Lawyers for the man who instigated Pizzagate and who once called Barack Obama a demon now say Alex Jones’ on-air rhetoric is all an act.
Jones and his ex-wife, Kelly, are involved in a child custody case, and as the Austin American Statesman writes, a jury will have to determine if Jones’s persona is fake or real—and if that should have a bearing on whether he gets custody of his children.
For now, Alex Jones’s lawyer said what you hear from the InfoWars founder is not what he really believes. Randall Wilhite, Jones’s attorney, said Jones should be thought of as an actor. Wilhite, in fact, told District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that judging Jones on his rhetoric for the custody case would be like judging Jack Nicholson as if he were actually the Joker from Batman.
“He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said, referring to Jones. “He is a performance artist.”
Kelly Jones, though, portrays her ex-husband as an unstable man who has levied assault threats at Alec Baldwin and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and says he wants Jennifer Lopez to get raped. He’s also gained a big fan in President Donald Trump.
“He broadcasts from home,” Kelly Jones said, via the American Statesman. “The children are there, watching him broadcast.”
Broadcasts that sometimes includes videos like this.
On Obama and Hillary Clinton being demons.
On how he thinks the Sandy Hook school massacre was fake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwudDfz1yAk
On the mainstream media and how they’re the enemy.
Poweful! @realDonaldTrump calls out the true enemy in this video report. https://t.co/GdXh5lR9mO and I coin it 2015. https://t.co/UCGxZJDybu
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 19, 2017
On Pizzagate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9FkSn5q630
For what it’s worth, Jones later recanted and apologized for starting the Pizzagate controversy, the conspiracy theory that alleged a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor was a front for a child sex-trafficking ring connected to 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chairman, John Podesta. That led to a gunman from North Carolina visiting the restaurant last December, saying he wanted to investigate Jones’s bogus claim.
Last week, Kelly Jones’s attorneys began playing some of her ex-husband’s videos for Naranjo to preview what they want the jury to hear. In one from 2015, he told his then-12-year-old son that “you’re a good little knight who’s going to grow up, I know, to be a great fighter against the enemy.”
Then, they played a video of a conversation between Jones and Republican strategist and Trump associate Roger Stone that, according to the Statesman, “quickly escalated into an expletive-studded, gay-bashing rant by Jones directed at Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee investigation of Trump’s Russia ties.” Jones’ rant ends with a veiled threat against Schiff’s life.
Later, Jones—who has said in the past that he actually believes what he says on the air—said the rant at Schiff was “clearly tongue-in-cheek” and “basically [an] art performance.”
The child custody trial is expected to last two weeks.
