According to reports, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol incident apparently has a plethora of text conversations from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ cellphone.
According to CNN, legislators on the bipartisan group were given two years’ worth of communication to and from Jones, as they seek to connect the US Capitol disturbance to Donald Trump and his associates’ desire to overturn the 2020 election.
The messages were allegedly received by the panel from lawyer Mark Bankston, who is representing the parents of a 6-year-old boy slain in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in 2012.
The parents won a lawsuit against Jones last week after he repeatedly referred to the tragedy as a “false flag” and said the children slain were crisis actors, among other insensitive statements about the killing.
Jones was forced to pay roughly $50 million in punitive and compensatory damages to the two families.
When contacted by DailyMail.com, a spokeswoman for the January 6 committee refused to comment.
Bankston seemed to catch Jones off guard last week when he disclosed during cross-examination that the Defendant’s lawyer inadvertently provided Plaintiff’s counsel a large number of text conversations, which Bankston said demonstrated Jones lied under oath while testifying in his own defense.
Mr. Jones, did you know that your lawyers made a mistake and provided me a digital copy of your whole smartphone with every text message you’ve sent in the last two years 12 days ago?’ Bankston inquired at the trial’s now-viral moment.
Presiding Judge Maya Guerra Gamble denied Jones’ lawyer’s attempt to conceal the communications from House investigators.
‘I’m not standing in the way of you and Congress,’ Gamble allegedly told Bankston.
Jones also testified in a closed-door session earlier this year before the committee on January 6.
He reported the encounter on his radio program after the event, bragging that he had claimed the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination “nearly 100 times.”
‘The inquiries were generally very legitimate,’ Jones noted at the time. And I wanted to respond to the questions. But, at the same time, it’s a good thing I didn’t, since I’m the sort that tries to answer questions perfectly even if I don’t know all the answers, and they may then accuse me of perjury.’
Jones, a vociferous Trump supporter, was a significant proponent of the ex-2020 president’s election fraud falsehoods, and the committee accuses him of helping orchestrate his Stop the Steal protest at the White House Ellipse soon before the incident.
Jones was also present on US Capitol grounds on January 6 but did not enter the building, according to a letter addressed to Jones in November 2021 by committee Chair Bennie Thompson.
It’s unclear when the committee will have time to go through the fresh trove of communications, or if they will spark new lines of investigation.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the panel, said she was interested in seeing Jones’ messages but had not yet seen them as of Sunday.
‘Well, we know that his actions did encourage some of the January 6 activity, and we want to know more about that,’ Lofgren said CNN.
Because we haven’t seen the texts, we don’t know what we’ll discover. But I’m sure we’ll look into it and learn more.’
The texts, if relevant, might play a prominent part in the committee’s next set of hearings, which Vice Chair Liz Cheney disclosed in the eighth and last session of the panel’s summer series of presentations.
According to the Wyoming Republican, the extra hearings are scheduled for this autumn.
‘We have received fresh evidence, and new witnesses have boldly came forward,’ Cheney said at the close of the committee’s ninth overall hearing on July 21.
‘Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been and will continue to be successful. New subpoenas have been issued, and the dam is beginning to crack.’
‘We have considerably more evidence to share with the American people, and much more to acquire,’ she continued. As a result, our committee will spend the month of August gathering new material on a variety of fronts before holding more hearings in September.’