UNREMORSEFUL: Alex Jones is promoting a violent and dangerous new conspiracy theory
Less than a week after a Texas jury ordered Alex Jones to pay nearly $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a defamation suit brought by the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, the shameless conspiracy theorist was at it again.
On a live episode of his show on the InfoWars website on Thursday, Jones warned of an alleged Democrat-led plot to stage mass shooting “hoaxes” and floated baseless premonitions of assassination attempts on the lives of ex-President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
“I believe the deep state, they’d kill Biden, which we’re totally against happening, as a pretext to really try to trigger a civil war, and/or Trump,” Jones said on a live stream on his show. “They might actually kill both of them.”
“I’m worried that the Biden controllers, the third administration of Obama – I’m worried that Obama and his people may provocateur [sic] some type of big terror attack,” he claimed on Bannon’s podcast. “They might launch a cyber attack and blame it on the Russians. They might start a major war.”
After the FBI’s execution on Monday of a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Jones appeared on former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon’s War Room: Pandemic podcast where the pardoned Trump ally previously pushed a similar conspiracy theory.
According to The Independent, Bannon claimed the “deep state” was planning to assassinate the ex-President.
“’I do not think it’s beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump. I think – I think everything’s on the table,’ Mr. Bannon said in an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Infowars,” The Independent wrote.
“’I think security ought to be at the highest it’s ever been. And honestly, I think he ought to and I think he should have flown down in Mar-a-Lago this morning, walked out there at noon today, and said, hey, I’m running for president, United States. Suck on that,’” Bannon stated.
Bannon is facing up to two years in prison after being convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the House Select Committee’s subpoena to testify in their investigation into the events leading up to the January 6th Capitol riot.
Heidi Beirich, the co-director of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, warned of the potential dangers that conspiracy theories pose in light of rising threats of violence and increased tensions in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search.
“All of this is so dangerous – just look at what happened in Ohio with the guy who attacked the field office for the FBI,” she said by email, The Dallas Observer reported.
Beirich is referring to Ricky Shiffer, the former Navy veteran killed last week in a shootout with local police after attempting to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati field office last week after the federal officials served a search warrant on Trump’s Palm Beach home.
Jones is far from being out of the woods legally after two years of his text messages were accidentally sent to the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Sandy Hook trial by defense lawyers and were subsequently forwarded to the House Select Committee.
One would think that his legal peril would lead him to be more cautious in what he says in his Infowars broadcasts and other public statements. Instead, he is dangerously doubling down on violent rhetoric, most likely to raise more money for his much-needed legal defense. Let’s hope that the financial consequences of his previous lies will eventually lead to the silencing of his inflammatory voice.
Original reporting by Patrick Strickland at The Dallas Observer.
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