AUSTIN, Texas – An attorney for the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre who are suing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false claims about the attack said Thursday that the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee has requested two years' worth of records from Jones' phone.
Attorney Mark Bankston told the Texas court where Jones is on trial to determine how much he owes for defaming the parents that the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has requested the digital records. He later said outside of court that he plans to comply with the request.
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A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment Thursday.
As Jones testified at the trial on Wednesday, Bankston revealed that the Infowars host's lead attorney, Andino Reynal, had mistakenly sent him the last two years’ worth of texts from Jones’ cellphone.
Reynal asked Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to declare a mistrial over the mistaken transfer of records and said they should have been returned and any copies destroyed. Gamble rejected the request.
Reynal also accused Bankston of trying to perform “for a national audience.” He said the material included a review copy of text messages over six months from late 2019 into the first quarter of 2020.
Bankston said his team followed Texas' civil rules of evidence and that Jones’ attorneys missed their chance to properly request the return of the records.
"Mr. Reynal is using a fig leaf (to cover) for his own malpractice,” Bankston said.
He said the records mistakenly sent to him included some medical records of plaintiffs in other lawsuits against Jones.
"Mr. Jones and his intimate messages with Roger Stone are not protected,” Bankston said, referring to former President Donald Trump's longtime ally.
Rolling Stone, quoting unnamed sources, reported Wednesday evening that the Jan. 6 committee was preparing to subpoena the data from the parents’ attorneys to assist in the investigation of the deadly riot.
Bankston said outside of court Thursday that the committee had requested the phone records, but hadn't subpoenaed them. He also said he wasn't familiar with everything that was in the records yet, including whether they include any information that the committee is seeking, because there was so much information in them.
“We don’t know (yet) the full scope and breadth,” of the material, Bankston said. “We certainly saw text messages from as far back as 2019. ... In terms of what all is on that phone, it’s going to take a little while to figure that out.”
“The Jan. 6 committee doesn’t have any more information about what’s on that phone than I do. I don’t know if it even covers the time period they are interested in,” he said
Jones didn't attend Thursday's court proceedings. But on his Infowars show Thursday, he said the records were from a year before Jan. 6 and had “nothing to do with it.”
“And if anything, I say more radical things on air than I do on text messages. And the idea that there’s some type of criminal activity on there is preposterous,” he said.
The jury in Austin is deciding how much Jones should pay to the parents of a child killed in the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, because of his and Infowars' repeated false claims that the shooting was a hoax created by advocates for gun control. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents suing Jones, are seeking at least $150 million in damages.
Last month, the Jan. 6 committee showed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of right-wing figures, including Jones, and others vowing that Jan. 6 would be the day they would fight for Trump.
The committee first subpoenaed Jones in November, demanding a deposition and documents related to his efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election and a rally on the day of the attack.
In the subpoena letter, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman, said Jones helped organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse that preceded the insurrection. He also wrote that Jones repeatedly promoted Trump’s false claims of election fraud, urged his listeners to go to Washington for the rally, and march from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Thompson also wrote that Jones “made statements implying that you had knowledge about the plans of President Trump with respect to the rally.”
The nine-member panel was especially interested in what Jones said shortly after Trump’s now-infamous Dec. 19, 2020, tweet in which he told his supporters to “be there, will be wild!” on Jan. 6.
“You went on InfoWars that same day and called the tweet ‘One of the most historic events in American history,’” the letter continued.
In January, Jones was deposed by the committee during an hourslong, virtual meeting in which he said he exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination “almost 100 times.”
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri in Washington, D.C., and Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.
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Find more of the AP's coverage of Alex Jones: https://apnews.com/hub/alex-jones