The fall of Alex Jones and his conspiracy empire
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Soon after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were murdered, Infowars’ Alex Jones began to push the false idea that the tragedy was a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. government to promote gun restrictions. So a group of parents decided to sue Jones for defamation, and in 2022 they were awarded a $1.5 billion settlement.
This month, a bankruptcy judge ordered Jones to liquidate some of his personal assets to help cover the judgment. Jones was allowed to keep his controlling stake in the Infowars conspiracy site for now, but the site could be shut down within a matter of months.
Elahe Izadi sits down with media reporter Will Sommer to talk about Jones’s fall and what it could mean for the future of the misinformation landscape.
Today’s show was produced by Peter Bresnan. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and Reena Flores and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ms. |
| 0:04.0 | Lewis, if you would please, introduce yourself |
| 0:07.0 | the jury. |
| 0:08.0 | My name is Scarlet Lewis, and I am first and foremost the mom of two boys, Jesse and his surviving brother. |
| 0:20.0 | Scarlet Lewis was testifying in a Texas courtroom in August 2022. |
| 0:27.0 | Lewis is the mother of Jesse Lewis, one of the 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook School shooting. |
| 0:33.4 | Tell us more about Jissi. |
| 0:37.0 | How was his personality? |
| 0:38.7 | He was very bold. He was very old for his age. |
| 0:46.8 | Lewis was in court that day because she and a group of parents |
| 0:50.2 | had brought a defamation lawsuit against radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. |
| 0:57.0 | Jones is the owner of the popular website Info Wars and he hosts a four-hour internet talk show six times a week. |
| 1:05.8 | When they go to full martial law, there's a very good chance they're going to go ahead and |
| 1:09.3 | kill Trump. |
| 1:11.5 | And I would predict the same day they killed Trump. |
| 1:15.0 | They'll probably kill Senator Paul or try. |
| 1:17.0 | Jones has spent his career spreading a lot of different false conspiracy theories. |
| 1:22.0 | They'll try to kill me and they'll go ahead. lot of different false conspiracy theories. |
| 1:22.8 | They'll try to kill me and they'll go ahead to say no, Joe. |
| 1:25.8 | Debunk theories about shadowy government cabals and chemicals in drinking water. |
| 1:31.4 | One of the theories Jones repeated on his show that the 2012 |
| 1:35.4 | Sandy Hook School shooting was a hoax, orchestrated by the government as an excuse |
... |
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