the following is a cnn special report. a nation torn apart by lies. >> i say it's treason. >> one man has been preaching disinformation for decades, alex jones. >> we will never give up. we will never surrender. >> spreading extremism. >> joe biden, burn in hell.

>> convincing millions of followers -- >> alex! alex! alex! >> damaging lives. >> alex jones lied about sandy hook, a tragedy that i lost my son in. >> tonight, the disturbing history, from the fringe -- >> he could turn his tongue black as if he were possessed. >> to making a fortune. >> truth doesn't matter, it's like a far-right qvc. >> threatening american democracy. >> 1776! 1776! >> through exclusive footage. >> i'm donald trump now. >> interviews with former employees. >> we made up the stories. we lied. >> alex will not stop. >> his victims -- >> every day i get a death threat. >> and those trying to stop him. >> how would you describe him to people who don't know him? how do you explain to folks who have never seen something this

crazy? >> if they want to fight, they better believe they got a fight. >> "megaphone for conspiracy: alex jones." this is alex jones infowars studio in austin, texas. >> are you guys ready? >> it looks like a professional news set, but the similarities end there. >> i'll drink your blood, you understand that? i will -- i will hang your ass up and cut you into cutlets. >> the globalists are agents of corruption. the official story of sandy hook has more holes in it than swiss cheese. >> a founding father of disinformation, jones is infamous for his most vile lie, that the sandy hook shooting was a hoax. >> the whole thing was fake. >> jones and his followers launched a years-long vendetta against the families of the children who were murdered. >> he was fueling this conspiracy theory that the children didn't die, they were actors.

real people were murdered, along with my son. >> it made it impossible for these parents to have closure. all of my clients have received numerous death threats. they've all been in a situation where their lives have been in genuine peril. >> why pay attention to jones? >> there were so many people who said, if you just ignore it it will go away. in order to grow, you didn't need any of the main street culture's attention, as long as he had that bubble that was allowed to grow and fester uninterrupted, that's what made him a major cultural force. so ignoring him did nothing for us. >> that bubble started nearly 30 years ago with a show that would become "infowars." >> the government said they were going to put poisons and toxins and bioweapons in the vaccines. >> more than a decade before covid-19, jones was spreading dangerous conspiracy theories that now sound eerily recycled. >> the u.n., the world health organization, the cdc have all been caught adding sterilizers,

cancer viruses, poisons. >> infowars has grown from a fledging radio show into a multimedia empire that has reached tens of millions. >> there is a formula. the formula is you find a story that people are upset about and you play it up as much as you possibly can, as extreme as possible in the most dramatic way. >> cnn spoke in-depth to those who have followed jones' rise and those who have worked with him. filmmaker kay linen robinson appeared repeatedly on jones' show, made a documentary with him, before realizing it was all a sham. >> i felt like i was doing the right thing. like i felt like i was on the side of truth. >> robert jacobson worked at infowars for 13 years and then finally had enough. >> he will just lie, straight up lie like nothing's going on, like it's real. and the issue with that is a lot of people believe him. >> josh owens spent four years editing and producing at infowars.

>> people always ask me, does jones believe the things that he says? i don't know if it matters if he believes what he says because the people who listen to him believe what he says. >> the elites are killing kids, drinking blood, torturing people. >> every one of his thought patterns, the three percenters, the qanon group, the anti-vaxers, they all originate from alex. he's the foundation of this stuff. >> hillary clinton is a god damn demon. excuse me, it's not taking it in vain. she is a demon damned to hell. excuse me. >> his whole shtick is that there is a war for your mind. >> new world order is run by absolutely ruthless individuals hell bent on dehumanizing the entire human community. >> it's the idea that the shadowy figures in the new world order are really controlling things. >> the fruits of the new world order are hell and death and destruction. >> once written off as unhinged, fringe, and crazy --

>> alex jones! alex jones! >> -- alex jones has become an alt-right influencer and his theories have become main stream, delivered to a wider audience often with a violent message. >> i want to break your jaw off and grab it with my hands and rip the mandible off your head. i want to bash your brains out. i want to bring you low. >> a lot of his content is deeply dangerous. the nature of his deliver and its violence and its words is effective, i think, in drumming up anger and really playing on people's sense of fear and anxiety. >> they want a fight, they better believe they got one! [ cheers ] >> some who listen to jones have committed acts of violence, one killed police officers. another fired shots at the white house. another opened fire in a d.c. pizza restaurant. and on january 6th, 2021 --

alex jones and his influence were on full display at the u.s. capitol. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> long before they became infamous on january 6th, leaders of the proud boys, the oath keepers, the stop the steal movement, all were deeply connected to alex jones. >> once you start looking at all the different places he appears in our culture, you understand that he has had an outsized level of influence for somebody like him and part of that is because he was able to fly under the radar for so long. >> jones grew up in a small suburb of dallas where even as a young man he would act out and spin tall tales. bodurham was a friend from jones' neighborhood. >> there was a lot of strange things going on, a lot of things i witnessed that were -- people didn't do. >> friends claimed he memorized

the bible, talk about satan and at times seemed possessed. >> he would talk in tongues a lot. he would get into these trances. >> the high school football coach said jones craved attention. >> i don't believe in any witchcraft, hocus-pocus or anything like that, but he could turn his tongue black and his mouth black. he would stick his tongue out and shake his head as if he was possessed. >> he could turn his tongue black. i saw him do that on a couple occasions. >> you are the second person who's told me this. i don't get it. >> i don't either. he would have to be really spun up and in that -- kind of in that state where he was really upset. he would stick that tongue out and it would literally go black. >> and he was violent. >> once i hit puberty, i became somewhat of a hellion, a lot of fighting. >> including one fight that would change his life. for years, jones told viewers a

story of why he and his family had to leave suburban dallas, and why he was obsessed with government corruption. >> they had cops up there that i knew were drug dealers. i stood up and i said i was add a pool party, he was selling cocaine and ecstasy last week. they took me in an office, ran my head in a wall, and told me we're going to kill you. they said you're going to move out of this town right up. >> that's the furthest thing from the truth. i can unequivocally deny that that ever happened. >> randy tally and others who spoke to cnn remember it differently, not a fight involving a corrupt police force but alex jones attacking another student named jared murow. >> i saw jared's feet go up in the air, and then i saw alex drop down, which you know, they call it a pile driver. and he, you know, pile drived him. >> jones slammed morrow head

first into the floor. morro tells cnn he suffered a concussion and nine cull fractures that will not heal. >> as far as fights go, that was the most brutal i had seen. >> after alex's fighting troubles, the jones family would quietly move to austin. >> hello, austin, texas, i'm alex jones. >> in the mid-1990s, jones would eventually find the attention he craved, spreading lies, conspiracy theories, on public access cable tv. >> trying to get the information out to you folks. >> i had a camera about a foot away from my face and i was controlling the systems myself, and i went live. and i talked for an hour. >> so sick of wimps and scum, filthy scum everywhere, w weaklings that never got in a fistfight. >> there was no social media, right so what this was was basically a local youtube. anybody could have a show.

>> alex inspired a lot of folks. there was 20 alexes on the air at that time. he stood out. >> black helicopters are being used for surveillance of the public. >> so it's a little bit more risky -- >> kelly jones, jones' ex-wife met and worked for him at the public access station. they would later fall out in a bitter divorce. >> if you ever spent any amount of time with him, he's not like you or me. he's abnormal. like, he's really strange and weird. >> i'm a weird son of a gun. of course i'm weird. >> that weirdness, mixed with his charisma would make jones an austin superstar. he would get a time slot on a local radio station that later went national. >> when he was younger, he was very articulate, very dynamic. he looks great on camera. >> he would pull stunts demanding attention on austin street corners. >> this is how george bush dresses. >> he got a radio show, tv shows. >> we'll continue to keep you posted on what's going on in oklahoma city. >> he would spin major news

events no matter how tragic into darker conspiracy theories. >> the government had prior knowledge and was instrumental in engineering the attacks on the alford p. murrow building in oklahoma city. >> today's attack at columbine high school could be the worst mass shooting in united states history. >> columbine we know was a false flag. >> he took advantage of a new forum, streaming on the internet at a time when half of the country didn't yet have access to the web. >> don't believe me. go to infowars.com. >> by september 2001, jones built a following willing to believe just about anything. >> police have cleared up all these streets. >> then on a clear tuesday morning, september 11th, alex jones who had spent a lifetime trying to get attention, would see a tragedy as his biggest opportunity yet. >> we have been predicting this nightmarish development for years.

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in the aftermath of the attack on new york, the search for missing loved ones and a nation seeking a way forward, alex jones would spread the lie that his own government was to blame. >> i'm telling you right now, 90% chance it came from the u.s. government or from the eu. >> the critical moment over the arc of alex jones' life is the 9/11 truther movement, which should be called the 9/11 hoax movement, that 9/11 was an inside job. >> america today is on bended knee. >> the outrageous lie, that the government of george w. bush had plotted, planned, and aided the attack, believers would come to be known as truthers. >> my friends, the government just didn't have prior knowledge of september 11th al qaeda attacks.

they actually funded, trained, protected, coddled, shepherded al qaeda into this country. >> even for alex jones, this time he went too far. a majority of the stations carrying his radio show canceled it. >> everything that was supposed to destroy him did have a negative impact but also catapulted him to a higher level. >> as jones would explain in an interview years later obtained by cnn, his 9/11 lies made him a conspiracy superstar. >> that launched this whole cult deal, the whole world. i didn't realize how big it was. i was the leader of the truther movement. >> 9/11 smoking guns. >> he starts putting out these videos that are adjunct to his radio show and starts to build a cult-like following around these lies. >> stop making excuses for what they're doing to us! >> when alex goes on camera and he gets himself riled up and

starts shouting and starts getting hysterical, it's what his audience feel like inside. and he played the character that they wanted to hear for them. the angry, furious person that wanted to take back america. >> 2008 brought barack obama, a new slew of conspiracy theories, and more success for infowars. >> ladies and gentlemen, barack obama is not my king, he is not my master, he is not my lord. he is nothing but a mask of the globalist. >> infowars.com, we're standing in front of the az islamic cent of america -- >> he would stir up fears of muslims taking over the united states for years and sent joe biggs, who would later become a leader of the proud boys, on so-called reporting trips across the country. former infowars employee josh owens was part of the production team. >> they wanted us to go to these majority-muslim communities and report on why are these people in these communities, what's going on, this seems suspicious. there was nothing to it.

>> no sharia law overruling the united states government? >> no, no. but that's what jones wanted. he made up the stories because there was nothing to report on. in essence, we lied. >> and with the growing popularity of social media, jones finally had the outlet that would be a perfect amplifier for his outrage. >> a lot of his clips were going viral. alex jones used platforms like facebook, like twitter, like youtube to draw people in. >> they would promote and amplify the kind of content that gets people most engaged. >> he knew that if he made videos that were more extreme, more outrageous, more shouty -- >> clean them out. >> -- youtube would give it to people that were looking for him. around 80% of their views were from youtube recommendations, were from people not looking for his content. a huge amount of the success was

the algorithms. >> court documents show infowars' audience doubled in four years. >> he wants to give people what they came there to get. >> true or not? >> true or not. when there was mass shooting, there was a definite get everything you can to try to prove it was a false event. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> connecticut state police have responded to reports of a shooting at sandy hook elementary school. >> the bodies of those children are still in the school. >> 20 children, six adults, and the shooter. 27 total. >> don't ever think the globalists that have hijacked this country wouldn't stage something like this. they kill little kids all day, every day. >> the day of the sandy hook shooting proved nothing was off limits, even the slaughter of children. >> i said they are launching attacks, they are going to come after our guns. look for mass shootings. and then magically it happens. >> jones claimed it was a government plot, a false flag. the grieving parents, crisis actors.

>> you got parents laughing, ha ha ha, and they walk over to the camera and go [ sobbing ]. >> what alex and the crew was doing was accusing parents of an unspeakable tragedy of being liars as well. it was the grossest level of insult i can imagine. >> the whole thing is a giant hoax. >> people tend to think alex jones maybe got on the show a couple times and said sandy hook was fake, and the reality was it was an obsession he couldn't let go off. >> jones' audience ate it up. one infowars article claiming no one killed at sandy hook was viewed more than 3 million times. >> there had been sandy hook fanatics who would show up at houses and start banging on their door harassing the parents. >> i don't think you can find a lower person in somebody like alex jones. >> neil heslin lost his 6-year-old son, jesse, in that shooting. >> alex jones puts a lot of

lives in danger, a lot of families' lives in danger and at risk. >> he and others have sued jones over his lies. mark bankston is the attorney representing some of the families. >> at infowars there is a nearly bottomless well of hatred and cruelty. they don't care about the typical things you would expect a reasonable, rational person to care about. >> this is -- >> jones would hire pro wrestler dan ba dondi to cover sandy hook, and he harassed city employees. >> the sandy hook truth is coming out and you people are going to jail. >> looks like you were just trying to drum up conspiracies, kind of make a spectacle of yourself, really. >> it's not a spectacle. >> it's complete conspiracy theories. >> because most of the american public was thinking the same thing. >> most of the american public was not thinking it was fake. >> nobody was saying it was fake. >> crisis actors? >> i didn't say that. i know they're not crisis

actors. i went to the grave sites, the memorial and everything, it was sad and heartbreaking to see -- >> you were all part of it, dan. >> i was joust doing my job. >> you were part of that whole conspiracy theory and part of that pain. >> it's still the first amendment. >> alex jones never responded to multiple cnn requests to be interviewed for this program, but talked about sandy hook in a deposition. >> so you do not believe that you've done an outrageous wrong to these parents? >> no, i've not done an outrageous wrong to these parents. i have not -- no, i have not done an outrageous wrong. so i think as a pundit and someone giving opinion, that my opinions have been wrong, but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people. >> to say jesse never existed, he never died, you're defaming this little boy. it's a 6-year-old boy.

just awful. there's no words for it. >> donald, thank you joining us. >> it was this alex jones that in 2015 was singled out, sought after by a presidential candidate named donald trump.

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it's time to stand up -- >> this is what all elites end up doing, raping and killing children dressed up like a werewolf. you want to fight? get ready. you're going to get it. >> he established himself is the king of conspiracy theories. >> they put cancer viruses on record in the vaccines. >> and learned early on his lies could make him cash. >> by the books, the films, the pro-gun t-shirts. you also need to plant a garden. >> i was in my late 20s, i was making as much money as an nfl quarterback. >> one of the best videos i've produced -- >> at first, jones was selling dvds and survival gear. >> the globalists are filling our water with radioactive isotopes. >> if you look at the infowars store, it is a mall of things to buy if you think the world is ending. >> silver bullet from infowarslive.com. >> in 2013, jones would discover he could make a fortune selling health products like vitamins and supplements under the

infowars brand. >> i take products that block the estrogen mimickers that basically feminizes men. >> the vitamins came at the time of the wars and became astronomically rich. >> how rich? jones has guarded details of his business, but court documents show a massive inflow of money, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, adding up to more than $165 million in revenue over a three-year period. much of that money, from stoking fears. >> i know three or four people that have family or themselves have brain tumors suddenly, kids from fungus. >> when jones pushed a new product and hyped concerns about bacteria and fungus, he raked it in more than $800,000 in two days. >> when i went to austin and spoke to alex about how much he made, he was on another planet. >> a staggering amount?

>> totally staggering. >> robertson had inside access to the infowars operation. >> he'll say buy these products, and at the end the first thing he'll say in the briefing room after a show is what were the sales during the show? how many people signed up live while it was broadcast. not was it a good show? did we expose the truth? so truth doesn't really matter at all. >> basically a three-hour a day infomercial to sell pills? >> yeah it's like a far-right qvc. >> i ended up editing the very first ad for the first product he put out, which was an iodine supplement called survival shield. >> it blows sky high. >> they were marketed at protecting from nuclear fallout. jones sent a team to california to find radiation from japan's fukushima disaster. >> none of us really knew how to use a guyger counter. we just posted videos saying we weren't finding elevated levels.

>> how was that received? >> they had never seen him so angry because we were posting what we were finding. i started to get the idea, maybe our job isn't to report the truth. maybe our job is to report what jones thinks the truth is. >> and to sell pills? >> absolutely. >> there are unanswered questions. >> another infowars contributor, anthony gucciardi, said in a 2014 court document obtained by cnn he would write about topics to promote the brand and sell products. one example, ebola. >> they said ebola is a real threat, that outbreaks are actually happening in the united states. they're going unreported. >> viewers weren't told gucciardi was also getting a cut of the supplement business. >> i think it's important for people to understand that they're paying money to and aligning themselves with an outlet that is entirely deceptive and that just wants their money. >> sounds like a grift, really.

>> yes, i think that's what it is, it's a con. >> you got the great brain pill. >> he would joke about people that would buy the products. when i first met him, i said i bought his brain force, and he was surprised, like why? it was kind of like the people that buy his stuff are silly. >> we're closer to world war iii than this planet has ever been. >> as the money poured in jones put some money back into the business making his show look like a real newscast. >> this is the third studio we've built. >> everyone is rushing around him with scripts and show plans, and it's like a military operation to make it technically perfect and totally perfect. yet he's going on air saying completely outlandish, insane, ridiculous, over-the-top things. it was a very strange contrast. >> how does he decide what goes on that show? >> it all comes from jones' brain. >> can you track all this crap

anymore? >> a lot of of is coming from an emotional place, a reactionary place. >> his behavior off the air, i have heard, could be even violent. >> yeah. there was physical violence. jones used to play these punching games. he punched an employee so hard that his arm split open. i mean, there was blood on his shirt. >> america is back! >> jones' emotional place was macho, alpha male and always on the attack. >> it's time for good people who have the real strengthen of life to stand up against this filth. >> and in 2015, that would play right into the hands of a presidential candidate sharing the same message. >> donald, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, alex. great to be with you. >> alex jones would explain how it was roger stone, trump's longtime ally, who initiated the strategy of putting donald trump side by side with infowars.

>> he contacted me and said i'm about to publish books about the biggest enemies of trump, and i believe that if we can take them out with how corrupt they are, this will pave the way to get trump in. he's one of us. he's a nationalist. >> i want to finish by saying your reputation is amazing. i will not let you down. >> that moment encapsulated the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and hate that we've seen in u.s. politics. >> after that, it became frighteningly trump in alex's office. it was like, wait, this place is extremely polarized towards one candidate, and it's never been this way before. sort of a momentum change. >> hillary's in like creepy, weird sick stuff, man. >> hillary for president! >> jones went all in as only he could. hillary clinton, trump's opponent, would be labeled satanic. >> i've talked to people innive details they're scared. they say, listen, she's

a freakin' demon and she stinks and so does obama. like what? sulfur. they smell like hell. >> during the 2016 campaign, jones began targeting democrats with one of his most unhinged conspiracy theories. >> pizza gate is real. >> pizza gate is a conspiracy theory that hillary clinton and leading democrats were engaged in a satanic, pedophilic cabal that in this case was meeting in the basement of comet pizza in washington, d.c. >> you have to go investigate it for yourself. >> one of jones' followers, edgar welch, did just that. >> he kicked in the kitchen doors and then proceeded to shoot at a locked door. the bullets pierced through here. >> behind that locked door, just a closet. the owner of the restaurant says there is no doubt who is to blame. >> this gunman had been directly motivated by a video made by alex jones.

every day i get a death threat. it's been 5 1/2, 6 years since this happened, and it really fundamentally changed my life. >> on the verge of the 2016 election, polls showed hillary clinton leading. alex jones and roger stone pushed a new conspiracy to try to explain why trump may lose. it was the birth of stop the steal. >> you're having your republic stolen in front of you. >> then trump won. >> right now, a historic moment. we can now project donald trump wins the presidency. >> infowars would rake in $850,000 in sales in its most lucrative day in three years. a president who pushed lies, conspiracy theories, and disinformation was heading to the white house. with jones' help, the info war against a democracy was put in motion.

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with trump in office, jones and infowars were riding high. >> i talked to the president and i talked to people who talk to the president every day. >> jones took credit for trump's win, told followers and those around him he had trump's ear. >> jones said it all the time. just got off the phone with trump. trump just called. i just had an interesting conversation with trump. >> believe it? >> i don't know. >> he showed me text messages he had shared with trump while trump was in the white house. that shocked me. i thought as soon as trump took office he would not speak to any

of those people. but they had, like, a relationship going on. >> was it a conversation? >> more so from alex's side. but there was a two-way conversation going on. i assume it was trying to convince him to come on infowars, which alex really wanted to come again. >> trump never came back on infowars, but it didn't matter. money was rolling in. jones appeared invincible. >> the truth is, my average video was getting 3 or 4 million views. >> but behind the scenes something changed. >> i wish i never would have met trump. >> social media companies took tougher stances on hate speech. >> they decided to de-platform my billions and millions of views, and millions of followers off everything from itunes to google to youtube to spotify. >> he would blame it on his alignment with trump.

>> kalin robinson captured these moments while filming a documentary with jones. >> i'm so sick of donald trump, man. god i'm [ muted ] sick of him. i'm not doing this because i'm kissing his [ muted ] ass. >> jones struggled with his words and asked for a retake. >> this is the real quote. what i said earlier was inaccurate, so please use this quote. i'm really glad that i backed donald trump three years ago, 3 1/2 years ago for president. but that said being sucked into that whole vortex has been quite instructional. i'm sorry, i'm going to get it straight this time. this is really important what i want to say, and i'm just trying to get this exactly right and exactly truthful. >> he tried again. >> so trump came to get my populous audience and then he did that. the democrats saw it as a threat, attacked it and said i was on trump. it made trump stronger and it made him win the election. and so they understand that

donald trump is infowars. and that i'm donald trump now. and it's like a ring of doom. we've been merged together into this -- into this thing, and they're obsessed with it. and it's some bizarre form of alchemy i don't understand. >> despite his feelings, when trump announced he would run for re-election, alex jones was right back on board. >> what the democrats and globalists are doing is insurrection against the country. >> he would attack the bidens and lie about a rigged election. >> dark forces trying to steal the election. >> voters are in the final hours of making a monumental decision. >> as ballots were being counted across america, it was becoming clear trump was about to lose. >> they're trying to steal an election. they're trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen. >> there is no doubt it is donald trump who is most responsible for millions of

people believing the lie that he won and the election was stolen. but it is undeniable it is alex jones who spent months telling his followers to revolt. >> they will be hiding. they will pay. they will be destroyed because america is righteous! if they want a fight, they better believe they got one! [ cheers ] >> immediately after the election, jones would appear at rallies across the country with his bullhorn. >> joe biden, burn in hell! >> and an armored vehicle -- >> 1776! >> resurrecting the slogan that roger stone had coined in 2016 -- stop the steal. >> stop the steal! stop the steal! >> raising money, firing up crowds, running sales on infowars, and calling his followers to action. >> everybody needs to be around that white house supporting us. they need to see patriots in the

streets of d.c. >> alex! alex! >> the fight has just begun! the fight has just begun! >> each speech aggressive and foreboding. >> we will never give up. we will never surrender. we will never back down to the satanic pedophile, globalist new world order. >> even other organizers planning stop the steal rallies like dustin stockton say jones was going too far. >> we could sense that, like, this was a really volatile situation. we also were trying to keep it from crossing that line into violence. they're fire brands and when you are doing that, it's kind of an exponential growth is like how outrageous you have to be. >> on december 19th, 2020, donald trump tells his followers big protest in d.c. on january 6th. be there. will be wild. alex jones never looked back. >> we need people to go to d.c.

now. don't wait. go to d.c., go to the white house. just go to the white house. go, go, go, go, go, go, go. >> january 6th, fight for trump. >> his show became a commercial for trump's rally, and on new year's eve, infowars guest host matt bracken said this. >> we're going to only be saved by millions of americans moving to washington, occupying the entire area, if necessary, storming right into the capitol. >> jones told his audience he was intimately involved in the planning of the january 6th rally. >> i put the money down because this is all private, folks. it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. and then a big donor came through and took care of that for us. it's not about me bragging, it's just people know the history. >> as crowds gathered in washington, d.c., on the night before the big rally, jones

would warn of a coming battle. >> this will be their waterloo. this will be their destruction! >> the next day, jones was front and center for trump's speech. >> we're going to walk down to the capitol. >> with megaphone in hand, jones then led a crowd to the capitol. >> let's go take our country back! let's start marching to the capitol! [ cheers ] >> when he arrived, it was chaos. trump supporters were in hand-to-hand combat with police. >> let's march around to the other side and let's not fight the police and give the system what they want. we are peaceful. >> the west side was anything but peaceful as jones was leading a crowd to the other side, the capitol was breached. jones arrived on the capitol's east side, climbed steps packed with rioters and called for peace but also revolution.

>> 1776! 1776! >> jones sees it all and takes off. >> fight for trump! fight for trump! >> just minutes after jones left, a mob trying to force the east capitol doors would push their way through. from a perch overlooking the capitol, he would rejoin infowars broadcast and start a new conspiracy theory. >> this is the bureaucracy, antifa started this, we're pretty much sure. >> these were trump supporters, including extremists with deep ties to alex jones.

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usa! usa! >> as federal agents zeroed in on january 6th, alex jones' influence was on display. his own employees face criminal charges from an "infowars" editor who streamed the riot. >> it feels good -- >> to "infowars" owen troyer, who was right by jones' side. >> 1776! 1776! >> at least 20 of those arrested either worked under alex jones, appeared on his show or followed his content. the mother of one rioter told a judge her son believes everything alex jones has to say. another rioter who allegedly tased a police officer told fbi agents alex jones inspired his journey.

>> how did you start to go into these rallies? >> "infowars". >> two men linked to jones face the most serious charges filed in the january 6th riot, seditious conspiracy. oath keeper founder stewart rhodes, a frequent infowars guest whose phone included encrypted chat that included jones. rhodes pleaded not guilty. and former infowars reporter and proud boys leader joe biggs, who pushed his way through the police lines into the capitol. he also pleaded not guilty. >> biggs, what you got to say? >> jones has not been charged, but cnn has learned that january 6th select committee investigators want to know about jones' involvement in the funding for trump's rally. the planning for his march to the capitol, and jones' ties to extremists now charged with conspiring against the government.

>> i said this, my lawyer told me, almost 100 times today during the interrogation, on advice of cousouns counsel, i a asserting my fifth amendment right to remain silent. >> jones refused to answer questions about january 6th, but told his infowars audience he knew nothing about a plot. >> i wasn't planning any violence. i was talking about everybody should be peaceful. >> he would say he was talking about a peaceful type of fight, but that's not how it's actually translated to the people that follow alex jones. >> alex! alex! alex! >> his former employees are now convinced jones and infowars are sham. >> i think i was facing a personal reckoning. it took me a lot longer to get the courage to leave. >> almost sounds like you're breaking away from a cult. >> oh, yeah, absolutely. i think there are many aspects of being in jones' world, being a listener, subscribing to those

ideas that are cult-like. >> it took kalen robinson six months to break away. what do you say to the people who are wrapped up in this world of infowars and believe these conspiracies? >> i would tell them directly that alex doesn't care about them, and they're just being used for money. >> and his business model? making money from supplements, not ads means jones' infowars empire is virtually untouchable. >> alex jones operates a media organization unlike any other. you can't put pressure on him by going after his advertisers. as long as he has that core of people buying those products, he'll do whatever he wants. the only things that can hold him accountable is a lawsuit. >> and lawsuits filed by the victims of sandy hook victims are starting to have effect. more than $49 million in the first trial. though texas law may limit the final amount. in court, jones admitted

children were murdered, but couldn't resist another conspiracy. >> i think sandy hook happened. i think it's a terrible event, and i think we need to protect our children from psychopaths. i think there was a cover-up because they had warnings. the fbi knew about it. they knew he was planning to attack the school. >> but it's another dramatic courtroom moment that could have implications beyond the civil lawsuits. >> your attorneys messed up sent you and entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you sent for the past two years. and that is how i know you lied to me when you said you didn't have text messages about sandy hook. >> bankston says the january 6th committee wants to see those texts from alex jones. despite the pressure, the lawsuits, even after losing millions, jones was on his website, pushing conspiracy and begging for money. >> but if you don't fund us, if you don't buy products at info

store.com, we will shut down. >> i want people to know that alex will not stop. this is what people have to understand about alex. will his behavior stay the same? absolutely. r unauthorized purchases on your discover card. new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. when you sponsor a job, you immediately get your shortlist of quality candidates, whose resumes on indeed match your job criteria. visit indeed.com/hire and get started today.

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[ cheers ] are we actually going? yes!! and once in a lifetime moments. two tickets to nascar! yes! find rewards like these and so many more in the xfinity app. good evening. the reckless outrageous lies of alex jones and the conspiracy theories he spread about the mass shooting at sandy hook elementary school that killed 26, now carries a price for him and a big one. $45.2 million.