Lawyer Says InfoWars Host Alex Jones Is A ‘Performance Artist’

Radio host Alex Jones discusses Sen. Rand Paul's views on vaccination in a video uploaded to YouTube Feb. 3, 2015.
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Trump-favored conspiracist and founder of InfoWars Alex Jones has claimed, in a custody battle, that his on-air persona is just that.

“He’s playing a character,” Jones’ attorney Randall Wilhite said at a recent pre-trial hearing, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “He is a performance artist.”

Wilhite reportedly said using Jones’ performances on Infowars to judge his capacity as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson on his depiction of the Joker in “Batman.”

Jones ex-wife, Kelly Jones, reportedly said Jones’ infamously unstable Infowars behavior — he recently told House Oversight Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to “fill your hand,” a reference to a gun duel — had affected their three kids’ lives.

“He’s not a stable person,” she said, according to the American-Statesman. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.”

Both accusations were references to recent tirades from Jones against the celebrities.

Jones issued a rare apology in late March for his role in furthering the conspiracy theory that Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., was the center of a child sex ring frequented by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and others.

In his apology, Jones described InfoWars’ coverage as “theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon.”

And he acknowledged the threat against Schiff a few days after it first aired, calling it “clearly tongue-in-cheek and basically art performance, as I do in my rants, which I admit I do, as a form of art.”

“When I say, ‘I’m going to kick your ass,’ it’s the Infowar,” Jones said. “I say every day we’re going to destroy you with the truth.”

Jones interviewed Donald Trump when he was a candidate for president, in December 2015. Jones has since claimed to have heard from Trump since his inauguration, including with invitations to the White House press pool and Mar-a-Lago, though neither Jones nor his InfoWars staff have yet been spotted at either.

After Jones’ claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting was a hoax, families who lost loved ones in the attack have pressured the President to disavow Jones.

Read the full American-Statesman story here.

Latest Livewire
74
Show Comments

Notable Replies

  1. This is interesting to me. Would it be possible to get Jones to say under oath that everything he says on his show is a lie?
    That is essentially the defense position. I would like to see it spelled out with more granularity.

  2. Avatar for darcy darcy says:

    Performance artist?

    Whatevah … as long as he doesn’t get naked and smear chocolate all over his chubby body.

  3. At a recent pretrial hearing, attorney Randall Wilhite told state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.”

    That’s the wrong actor/film to judge him by…and he can’t be judged via Heath or Cesar Romero either.

  4. “I don’t mean anything I say. Contrary to my words, I’m a decent human being. I pretend to be a monster only to incite anger for profit!”

  5. With that logic, every time I have a bowel movement, I’m a performance artist too…

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

68 more replies

Participants

Avatar for xpurg8d Avatar for austin_dave Avatar for ncsteve Avatar for jloomis3 Avatar for asanders91360 Avatar for fargo116 Avatar for faeyin Avatar for inversion Avatar for joelopines Avatar for theunpossiblefile Avatar for sanni Avatar for ignoreland Avatar for quax Avatar for rb639 Avatar for kitty Avatar for dickweed Avatar for moreyampersand Avatar for mrf Avatar for benthere Avatar for shirleyujest Avatar for coimmigrant Avatar for socalista Avatar for gregangelo Avatar for drtv

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: