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Alex Jones
American far-right conspiracy theorist (born 1974)
Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist. Since at least 2000, he has hosted The Alex Jones Show from Austin, Texas, originally broadcast by the Genesis Communications Network across the United States via AM radio syndication and internet.2
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born Feb 11, 1974.1
About
He is the founder of Infowars and Banned.Video, websites that promote conspiracy theories and fake news. Jones is regarded as one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists in the U.S.
Among many other conspiracy theories, Jones has alleged that the United States government either concealed information about or outright falsified the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Parkland high school shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the September 11 attacks. He has also claimed that several governments and large businesses have colluded to create a globalist "New World Order" through "manufactured economic crises, sophisticated surveillance tech and—above all—inside-job terror attacks that fuel exploitable hysteria". Jones has provided a platform for white nationalists and neo-Nazis on his website Banned.Video, as well as providing an "entry point" to their ideology.
A longtime critic of Republican and Democratic foreign and security policy, Jones supported Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid and continued to support him as a savior from an alleged criminal bipartisan cabal controlling the federal government, despite also falling out with Trump over several of his policies, including airstrikes against the Assad regime. A staunch supporter of Trump's re-election, Jones also supported the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. On January 6, 2021, Jones was a speaker at the rally in Lafayette Square Park supporting Trump that preceded the latter's supporters' attack on the US Capitol. In 2026, Jones once again fell out with Trump over his disagreements with the Iran war, criticizing the intervention as contrary to the "America First" message.
In October 2022, for Jones's defamatory falsehoods about the Sandy Hook shooting, juries in Connecticut and Texas awarded a total of $1.487 billion in damages from Jones to a first responder and families of victims; the plaintiffs alleged that Jones's lies led to them being threatened and harassed for years. On December 2, 2022, Jones filed for personal bankruptcy. After three years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Jones's appeal without comment.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2
Companies
- InfowarsFounder13
- Infowars storeFounder14
Early life and education
Alexander Emerick Jones was born on February 11, 1974, in Dallas, Texas, and was raised in Rockwall, 25 miles (40 km) east of Dallas. His father was a dentist from Austin and his mother was a homemaker. He says he has English, German, Scottish, and Irish descent. The family moved to Austin in Jones's second year of high school. He attended Anderson High School, where he played football and graduated in 1993. After graduating, Jones briefly attended Austin Community College before dropping out.
As a teenager, he read None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a book by John Birch Society conspiracy theorist Gary Allen, which alleged global bankers, rather than elected officials, controlled American politics. It had a profound influence on him, and Jones has described Allen's work as "the easiest-to-read primer on The New World Order".
Waco siege and Oklahoma bombing
The Waco siege at the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Texas, had an impact on Jones. It ended in April 1993, near the end of Jones's senior year of high school, with a substantial fire and a significant number of fatalities. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these events "only confirmed his belief in the inexorable progress of unseen, malevolent forces". It was at this time he started to host a call-in show on public access television (PACT/ACTV) in Austin.
The Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, was intended by perpetrator Timothy McVeigh as a response to the federal involvement in the botched resolution of the Waco siege on its second anniversary. Jones began accusing the federal government of having caused it: "I understood there's a kleptocracy working with psychopathic governments—clutches of evil that know the tricks of control". He did not believe the bombing had been the responsibility of McVeigh and his associate Terry Nichols.
In 1998, Jones organized a successful campaign to build a new Branch Davidian church as a memorial to those who died during the 1993 fire. He often discussed the project on his public-access television program. He claimed that David Koresh and his followers were peaceful people who were murdered by Attorney General Janet Reno and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms during the siege.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Career
Occupation: radio personality, gun rights advocate, writer, film producer, film director, anti-vaccine activist, conspiracy theorist, documentary filmmaker.6
- Date not recordedFounded Infowars store4
- Date not recordedFounded Infowars5
Known for: Infowars, The Alex Jones Show.7
Jones began his career in Austin working on a live, call-in format public-access cable television program. In 1996, Jones switched to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9 FM). Influenced by radio host William Cooper, who phoned in to Jones's early shows, Jones began to broadcast about the New World Order conspiracy theory at this time.
While running for Congress, Ron Paul was a guest on his show several times. In 1999, Jones tied with Shannon Burke for that year's poll of "Best Austin Talk Radio Host", as voted by readers of The Austin Chronicle. Later that year, he was fired from KJFK-FM for refusing to broaden his topics. The station's operations manager said that Jones's views made it difficult for the station to sell advertising. Jones said:
It was purely political, and it came down from on high... I was told 11 weeks ago to lay off Bill Clinton, to lay off all these politicians, to not talk about rebuilding the church, to stop bashing the Marines, A to Z.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Personal life
Jones has three children with his former wife Kelly Jones (née Nichols). The couple divorced in March 2015. In 2017, Kelly sought sole or joint custody of their children due to her ex-husband's behavior. She asserted that "he's not a stable person" and she was "concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress [Adam Schiff]". His attorney responded by claiming that "he's playing a character" and describing him as a "performance artist". On his show, Jones denied playing a character and he called his show "the most bona fide, hard-core, real McCoy thing there is, and everybody knows it"; whereas in court, Jones clarified that he generally agreed with his attorney's statement, but that he disagreed with the media's interpretation of the term "performance artist". Kelly was awarded the right to decide where their children live while he maintains visitation rights. In April 2020, a state district judge denied an emergency motion by Kelly to secure custody of their daughters for the next two weeks after Jones led a rally at the Capitol, where he was mobbed by supporters and called COVID-19 a hoax. In 2023, after a 2009 audioclip of Jones berating his then wife was obtained by the Daily Mail, Kelly claimed that Jones was "a total racist" regarding her Jewish heritage, claiming that her genes were "flawed".
His son, Rex Jones, has worked for InfoWars. His father, David Jones, is involved in InfoWars's business, and previously handled human resources tasks for his son, according to his testimony in a deposition.
Jones married Erika Wulff in 2017; they have one child. In February 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported on text messages that appeared to corroborate a September 2022 Rolling Stone story reporting that Jones may have spied on Wulff in 2019. In the texts reviewed by the SPLC, Jones told his security employee to monitor Wulff, expressing concern that she was cheating on him.
During Jones's 2017 custody trial, Alissa Sherry, the case manager for his family therapy sessions, testified that he had been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Politics
Early political activities
In 1998, he was removed from a George W. Bush rally at Bayport Industrial District, Texas. Jones interrupted Governor Bush's speech, demanding that the Federal Reserve and Council on Foreign Relations be abolished. Journalist David Weigel, reporting on the incident, said Jones "seemed to launch into public events as if flung from another universe".
In April 1999, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, Jones said that the U.S. government had "perpetrated" the shootings and that gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, as well as the murders, were "100 percent false flag."
In early 2000, Jones was one of seven Republican candidates for state representative in Texas House District 48, an open swing district based in Austin, Texas. Jones said that he was running "to be a watchdog on the inside" but withdrew from the race after a couple of weeks.
On July 15, 2000, Jones infiltrated the Bohemian Grove Cremation of Care, a Jones-alleged planning event of the New World Order involving child sacrifice, which he called "a ritualistic shedding of conscience and empathy" and an "abuse of power".
On June 8, 2006, while on his way to cover a meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Ottawa, Jones was stopped and detained at the Ottawa airport by Canadian authorities. They confiscated his passport, camera equipment, and most of his belongings. He was later allowed to enter Canada legally. Jones said about his immigration hold: "I want to say, on the record, it takes two to tango. I could have handled it better".
On September 8, 2007, Jones was arrested while protesting at 6th Avenue and 48th Street in New York City, when his group crashed a live television show featuring Geraldo Rivera. He was charged with operating a megaphone without a permit, and two other persons were also cited for disorderly conduct.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Legal issues and controversies
Pizzagate conspiracy theory
In February 2017, James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction of his advocacy for the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Jones was given one month to comply or be subject to a libel suit. In March 2017, Jones apologized to Alefantis and retracted his allegations.
Chobani yogurt company
In April 2017, the Chobani yogurt company sued Jones over his allegations that their Idaho plant was involved in several tuberculosis cases, and a sexual assault taking place the year prior. As a result, Jones issued an apology and retraction of his allegations in May 2017. However, while being deposed in the Texas defamation lawsuit filed by Sandy Hook parents, Jones reiterated many of his previous allegations against Chobani and its founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, indicating that he continues to espouse the false claims.
Charlottesville car attack
In March 2018, Brennan Gilmore, who shared a video he captured of a car hitting counter-protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally, filed a lawsuit against Jones and six others. According to the lawsuit, Jones said that Gilmore was acting as part of a false flag operation conducted by disgruntled government "deep state" employees promoting a coup against Trump. Gilmore alleged he received death threats from Jones's audience. In March 2022, Gilmore secured an admission of liability from Jones.
Read more
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
Jones has repeatedly spread disproven conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, including claiming that it was a "false flag" operation perpetrated by gun control advocates, that "no one died" in Sandy Hook, and that the incident was "staged", "synthetic", "manufactured", "a giant hoax" and "completely fake with actors". Jones faced numerous defamation lawsuits due to these lies.
Pozner and De La Rosa vs. Jones
On April 16, 2018 Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of victim Noah Pozner, filed a defamation suit against Jones, Infowars and Free Speech Systems in Travis County, Texas. Pozner, who has been forced to move several times to avoid harassment and death threats, was accused by Jones of being a crisis actor.
Heslin vs. Jones
On April 16, 2018, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of victim Jesse Lewis, filed a defamation suit against Jones, Infowars and Free Speech Systems in Travis County, Texas.
Jones was found to be in contempt of court even before the trial started as a result of his failure to produce witnesses and materials relevant to the procedures. Consequently, Jones and Infowars were fined a total of $126,000 in October and December 2019.
On January 22, 2021, the Texas Supreme Court threw out an appeal for dismissal by Jones of four defamation lawsuits from families of Sandy Hook victims. The court allowed the judgments of two lower courts to stand without comment, allowing the lawsuits to continue.
On September 27, 2021, a district judge in Texas issued three default judgments against Jones, requiring him to pay all damages in two lawsuits. These rulings came after Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence as ordered by the court, which the judge characterized as "flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules".
The jury trial began in Texas on July 25, 2022, where the plaintiffs' attorney said they would seek $150 million from the jury. Heslin testified on August 2 that conspiracy theorists, fueled by Jones's statements, fired into his house and car and subjected him and his family to harassment. He said Jones's failure to attend court during his testimony was a "cowardly act". While Heslin was testifying, Jones was broadcasting his show, calling Heslin "slow" and "manipulated by some very bad people". Jones subsequently arrived at court to present his testimony, first sitting through that of Jesse's mother Scarlett Lewis. Lewis said, "Alex, I want you to hear this. We're more polarized than ever as a country. Some of that is because of you." She asked Jones: "Do you think I'm an actor?" Jones responded, "No, I don't think you're an actor." As the only person testifying in his defense, Jones admitted the Sandy Hook shooting was "100% real", and agreed with his own attorney that it was "absolutely irresponsible" to push falsehoods about the shooting and its victims.
Jones testified that he had complied with court orders in defamation suits and is bankrupt. On August 3, cross-examination revealed that Jones had not fully complied with court orders to provide text messages and emails for pretrial evidence gathering. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County District Court admonished him for lying under oath, as his failure to comply with court orders was the reason he lost the defamation suits, and that bankruptcy proceedings had yet to be adjudicated. Gamble said, "You're under oath. That means things must actually be true when you say them". After the judge left the courtroom, Jones said Lewis and Heslin were being "controlled". While the jury deliberated the amount of compensatory damages, Jones was claiming on his radio show that the proceedings were "an incredible spectacle" backed by globalists trying to shut him down. On August 4, 2022, the jury ordered Jones pay Heslin and Lewis $4.1 million in compensatory damages, and the following day, he was ordered to pay an additional $45.2 million in punitive damages. On November 22, 2022, a judge ruled that Jones must pay the full amount of the punitive damages, even though this amount exceeds a cap under Texas law. (Jones's attorneys had estimated the punitive damages award would be reduced to $1.5 million, while the plaintiffs' attorneys had expected it to be reduced to $4.5 million.)
On November 22, 2022, Judge Gamble ruled that the punitive damages cap did not apply in this case due to the rare and egregious nature of the harm. She also questioned the constitutionality of the damages cap in general.
On April 25, 2023, Judge Gamble ordered Jones's attorney, Andino Reynal, to pay $97,169 to Heslin and Lewis for his bad-faith attempts to delay the trial, with a contingency fee of $55,000 should Reynal appeal and lose, and $61,600 if he appeals to the Texas Supreme Court and loses.
Lafferty et al. vs. Jones
On June 26, 2018, seven families of victims and an FBI agent who responded to the attack filed a defamation lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court against Jones, Infowars, Free Speech Systems, Infowars Health and others for spreading false claims, resulting in the harassment, stalking and threatening of the plaintiffs. One of their attorneys was Josh Koskoff.
By February 2019, the plaintiffs won a series of court rulings requiring Jones to testify under oath. Jones was later ordered to undergo a sworn deposition, along with three other defendants related to the operation of Infowars. He was also ordered to turn over internal business documents related to Infowars. In this deposition in the last week of March 2019, Jones acknowledged the deaths were real, stating he had "almost like a form of psychosis", where he "basically thought everything was staged".
On March 25, 2019, Jeremy Richman, one of the plaintiffs, whose daughter Avielle was killed, committed suicide. Jones, through his lawyer, offered condolences to Richman's family, but later that day on his show suggested that Richman had been murdered and that his death had something to do with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.
On April 5, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal by Jones against a court sanction in the lawsuit.
On November 15, 2021, the judge found Jones liable by default for defamation, for "willful non-compliance" in failing to turn over documents to the families in line with court orders.
On March 29, 2022, Jones offered a settlement of $120,000 to each of the thirteen people involved in the lawsuits, which was quickly rejected.
On June 2, 2022, Jones's attorneys asked the judge to drop them from the case. The judge said she had heard this before, citing thirteen times in the past four years when Jones's attorneys asked to replace each other or be dropped from the case. She ordered them to continue to represent Jones until she ruled on the motion on June 15.
On October 12, 2022, the jury awarded $965 million to be shared by 15 plaintiffs (eight families and one first responder). The plaintiffs' individual awards ranged from $28.8 million to $120 million. During the trial, the families testified that they had been threatened and harassed over years due to Jones's falsehoods. Jones reacted live to the verdict on his show, mocking it: "Do these people actually think they're getting any money?" He implored his viewers to donate to him to "appeal", and also declared that the jury's verdict was an attempt to "scare us away from questioning" school shootings such as the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and the Robb Elementary School shooting, but "we're not going to stop".
On November 10, 2022, the judge awarded the plaintiffs a further $473 million in punitive damages in the form of lawyers' fees, bringing the total to over $1.4 billion. The judge also issued an order that Jones was "not to transfer, encumber, dispose or move his assets out of the United States until further order of the court".
Jones moved for a new trial, but on December 22, 2022, the judge denied his request.
By the end of the summer of 2023, Jones had paid nothing to the families.
On December 6, 2024, the Connecticut Appellate Court reduced the total Jones owed to about $1.2 billion. It did this by affirming the jury's $965 million verdict while saying that Jones would not have to pay the $150 million in punitive damages that the lower court had awarded the plaintiffs. Jones sought to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, but on April 8, 2025, it declined to hear his appeal.
Sherlach vs. Jones
On July 24, 2018, William Sherlach, husband of victim and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, filed a defamation lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court against Jones, Infowars, Free Speech Systems and Infowars Health. Sherlach's lawsuit was consolidated into the Lafferty et al. vs. Jones lawsuit for the Connecticut trial.
Attempts to protect assets
Numerous media sources have raised questions on how much Jones really owns and hides in assets.
On April 6, 2022, according to the Associated Press and The Daily Beast, a lawsuit was filed in Austin, Texas, by some of the Sandy Hook families accusing Jones of hiding assets worth millions of dollars after he began being sued for defamation by the families of Sandy Hook victims. The suit claims Jones "conspired to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself". The lawsuit alleges Jones drew $18 million from the Infowars company beginning in 2018 and accuses Jones of claiming a "dubious" $54 million debt at about the same time to another company alleged by the lawsuit to be also owned by Jones. Norm Pattis, an attorney for Jones, said the lawsuit was "ridiculous" and denied that there had been any attempt to conceal assets.
Bankruptcies
On April 17, 2022, three companies owned by Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, suspending further civil litigation claims, as the families had sued Jones as well as his companies. The three companies affected were InfoW, Prison Planet TV, and IWHealth (or Infowars Health). The court filings estimated InfoWars' assets at between $0–$50,000, but its liabilities (including from the damages awarded against Jones in defamation suits) were stated as being between $1 million and $10 million. Regarding why Jones did not personally file for bankruptcy, his representative stated, "It would ruin his name and harm his ability to sell merchandise" and "Putting him in bankruptcy would harm his trademark value in terms of cashflow". A lawyer for the families involved in a Connecticut lawsuit against Jones responded, "Alex Jones is just delaying the inevitable: a public trial in which he will be held accountable for his profit-driven campaign of lies against the Sandy Hook families who have brought this lawsuit."
On June 10, 2022, a federal judge in Texas dismissed the bankruptcy protection case after Jones and the families agreed that the three companies would be dropped from the defamation lawsuits against Jones, allowing them to continue in Texas and Connecticut. On July 29, 2022, the parent company of InfoWars, Free Speech Systems, LLC, filed for bankruptcy. In response to the Connecticut legal settlement made against him, Jones had previously claimed assets of $6.2 million in January 2022.
On December 2, 2022, Jones filed for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas, claiming that his assets were between $1 million and $10 million, while his debts were between $1 billion and $10 billion. He also claimed that he had 50 to 99 creditors, and in February 2023, that the Department of Justice intended to seize his pet cat, valued at $2,000, to pay debts owed to the Sandy Hook families. On October 19, 2023, a Texas bankruptcy judge ruled that Jones cannot rely on bankruptcy protection to avoid paying the $1.5 billion he owes to the Sandy Hook families as a result of the Connecticut lawsuit. It remained unclear whether he would be able to reduce the amount of punitive damages in the Texas case.
In November 2023, the Sandy Hook families offered a settlement in which Jones would pay $85 million over 10 years (about 6 percent of what he had been court-ordered to pay). The offer was filed within Jones's personal bankruptcy case. The following month, Jones countered with an offer of $55 million over 10 years. In February 2024, Jones's general unsecured creditors (mostly Sandy Hook families) voted in favor of a Chapter 11 plan that would liquidate and redistribute his assets.
Appearing emotional and defiant, on June 1, 2024, Jones said on his program, "At the end of the day, we're going to beat these people. I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but it's been a hard fight. These people hate our children." The next day, the families filed an emergency motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, asking the judge to liquidate Alex Jones's company rather than allow him to reorganize it. The court filing said Jones has "failed to demonstrate any hope of beginning to satisfy" their claims. On June 6, Jones's attorneys filed a motion to convert his bankruptcy to Chapter 7 status, which would lead to liquidation of his personal assets, including his stake in InfoWars, which was agreed to by the plaintiffs the following day. On June 14, the judge approved the Chapter 7 liquidation. On June 24, the court-appointed trustee publicly revealed that he planned to shut down InfoWars. On September 24, the judge approved the sale of Free Speech Systems, the parent company of InfoWars.
The auction was scheduled for November 13, 2024.
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting
Jones spread discredited conspiracy theories about the 2018 Parkland high school shooting. He stated survivor David Hogg was a crisis actor.
Marcel Fontaine sued Jones on April 2, 2018, after InfoWars falsely identified him as the gunman and posted photos of him in several versions of an article on the InfoWars website about the massacre. The lawsuit was filed in Texas court naming Jones, InfoWars, parent company Free Speech Systems, LLC and Infowars employee Kit Daniels as defendants. Fontaine's lawsuit was the first one against Jones that involved his defamatory statements about mass school shootings. One of his lawyers stated that "Marcel Fontaine is the only reason why we filed the first Sandy Hook case", because after Fontaine's suit was filed, the families of two boys slain in the Sandy Hook shooting contacted his law firm about also suing Jones. Fontaine died in an apartment building fire in Worcester, Massachusetts, on May 14, 2022, caused by a former tenant. The tenant was arrested and charged with his murder as well as the deaths of three others.
Colony Ridge
In May 2026, the owners of Colony Ridge, a large housing development in Liberty County, Texas, filed a defamation suit against Jones and Pete Chambers, who campaigned unsuccessfully to be the Republican candidate in the 2026 Texas gubernatorial election. The lawsuit seeks over $10 million in damages and centers on comments Jones and Chambers made during a February broadcast which allegedly "branded [Colony Ridge] a 'mortgage scam,' a 'giant fraud site,' and a 'Sanctuary City' controlled by Mexican drug cartels," according to court filings. The lawsuit says that Jones took down the comments from the social network X after they had been viewed over 650,000 times, but that the comments were still circulating elsewhere online, and that "At no point have [Jones nor Chambers] offered any correction, clarification, or retraction of their lies about Colony Ridge." The owners recently made a $68 million settlement with the Department of Justice over allegedly predatory loan practices, while other Republican figures in Texas had also described the development as a "hotbed of crime" with neighborhoods controlled by cartels, and federal agents had recently conducted a series of immigration raids there.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alex Jones (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Links
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataAlex Jones on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaAlex Jones on Wikipedia
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- 11WikidataAlex Jones: X, on Wikidata
- 12WikidataAlex Jones: IMDb, on Wikidata
- 13WikidataInfowars, Founder
- 14WikidataInfowars store, Founder
- 15