i'll see you tomorrow night starting at 6:00 eastern. the cnn special report, "megaphone for conspiracy: alex jones" is next. have a great day. >> a announcer: the following ia cnn special report. >> a noation 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 -- [ chanting: alex ] >> damaging lives. >> alex jones lied about sandy hook, the 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. >> the truth doesn't really matter. it's like a far-right qvc. >> threatening american democracy. [ chanting: 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 them 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 can. >> megaphone for conspiracy. alex jones. >> this is alex jones' info wars studio in austin, texas. >> 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 hang your ass up and cut you into cutlets. the global instruments 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. >> that made it impossible for these parents to have closure. all of my clients have received numeral death threats. they've all been in a situation where their lives have been in

genuine peril. >> why pay attention to jones? >> there are so many people that said with jones, if you just ignore it, it would go away. in order to grow, he didn't need any of the mainstream culture's attention, as long as he had that bubble that was allowed to grow and ferris uninterrupted. that's what made him a major cultural force. so ignoring him did nothing to us. >> that bubble started nearly 30 years ago with a show that would become infowars. >> the government said that 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 joined from a fledgling radio show into a multi-million 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. film maker kaylin robertson 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. i felt like i was on the side of truth. >> robert jacobson worked at infowars for 17 years and 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 the things that he says, because the people who listen to him believe the things he says. >> the elites are killing little kids, drinking blood, torturing people. >> every one of those thought

patterns, either the 3 percenters, the qanon group, the anti-vaxers, they all originate from alex. he's the foundation of all of this stuff. >> hillary clinton is a goddamn demon! excuse me taking the lord -- it's not taking it in vain. she is a demon damned to hell. excuse me. >> his whole schick that there is a war for your mind. >> hell-bent on dehumanizes the entire human community. >> it's this idea that the shadows 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 -- sn [ chanting: alex jones ] >> alex jones has become an alt-right influencer and his theories have become mainstream, delivered to an often white

audience with a violent message. >> i want to bash your brains out. i want to bring you low. >> a lot of alex jones' content is deeply dangerous. the nature of his delivery and its violence in its words is effective, i think, in drumming up anger, and really playing on people's sense of fear and anxiety. >> they want to fight, they better believe they've got one. >> some who have listened 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. [ chant ing: stop the steal ] >> long before they became infamous on january 6th, leaders of the proud boys, the oathkeepers, the stop the steal

movement all were deeply connected to alex jones. >> once you start looking at all the different places that 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. bo durham was a friend from jones' neighborhood. >> there was a lot of strange things going on in that time with him. there was a lot of things that i witnessed that were -- people didn't do. >> friends claimed he memorized the bible, talked about satan, and at times seemed possessed. >> he would talk in tongues a lot. he would get into these trance. >> high school football coach randy talley says that jones craved attention. >> i don't believe in any witc witchcraft, hocus-pocus or anything like that, but he could turn his tongue black and his

mouth plaque, and he would stick his tongue out and shake his head, as if though he were possessed. >> he could turn his tongue black? >> i saw him do that on a couple of occasions. >> you're the second person who's told me this. >> mm-hmm. >> 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. >> and 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 has told viewers a story of why he and his family had to leave suburban dallas and why he's obsessed with government corruption. >> we were having an auditorium meeting about drug testing, and they had cops up there that i knew were drug dealers, and i stood up and said, i was at a pool party and he was selling

cocaine and ecstasy last we can. they took me into an office, rammed my head into the wall, told me, we're going to kill you, they said, you're going to move out of this town right now. >> that's the furthest thing from the truth that i can -- unequivocally deny that that ever happened. >> randy talley 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 morrow. >> 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 wi, and he, yo know, pile derived him. >> reporter: jones slammed m morrow head first into the floor. morrow told cnn that he suffered a skull fracture. after alex's fighting troubles, the jones family would quietly

move to austin. >> 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 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! weaklings that never got in a fistfight! >> there was no social media, right? so 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. a lot of guys were doing very similar things, but he stood out. >> yes, black helicopters are being used for surveillance of the public. >> a little bit more risky. >> kelly jones, jones' ex-wife, met and worked for him at the public access statement.

they would later fall out in a bitter divorce. >> if you ever spend 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. man, 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's street corners. >> this is how george bush dresses! >> got a radio show, got these 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 alfred 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, awas a false flag. >> he took advantage of a new forum, streaming on the internet at a time that half the country didn't yet have access to the web. >> don't believe me. go to infowars.com. >> by september 2001, jones had built a following willing to believe just about anything. >> police have cleared out all of these streets. >> then on a clear tuesday morning, september 11, 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. and it helps eliminate odor, instead of just masking it. so pull it in cle. secret works. ♪ if you shop at walmart, you get it.

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in the aftermath of the attack on new york, amid billowing smoke, 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 that it came from the u.s. government or from the eu. >> the critical moment over the arc of alex jones' life is when he seizes on what's called the 9/11 truther movement, which really 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, coldddled, protected, 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. >> it launched this whole cult deal in the whole world. i didn't realize how big it was. i was a leader of the 9/11 truth movement. >> 9/11, smoking guns. >> he starts putting out these videos that are adjuncts to his radio show and internet show, spreading these conspiracy theories and starts to built a cult-like following around these lies. >> stop making excuses for what they're doing to us! >> when alex goes on camera and gets himself riled up and starts shouting and starts getting h hyst hysterical, it's what his audience feel like inside and he played the character for them. the angry, furious person that wants 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 by king, he is not my master, he is not by lord. he is nothing but a mask of the globalists. >> we're standing in front of the islamic center 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 these people in these communities, what's going on? this seems suspicious. you know, there was nothing to it. >> no sharia law overruling the united states government. >> no, no, but that's what jones wanted. >> we 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 would go 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 if he made videos that were more extreme, more shout you, youtube would give it to people who weren't looking for them. and around 80% of their views were from youtube recommendations were for people who weren't looking for his content. a huge amount of infowars' success is the algorithms. >> court documents shows infowars' audience nearly doubled in four years. >> he wants to give people what they came there to get. >> true or not? >> true or not. when there was a mass shooting, there was a definite, get everything you can to try to prove that it was a false

events. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> connecticut state police have responded to a reports of a shooting at sandy hook elementary school. >> the bodies of those children are still in the school. >> 20 children, 6 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. >> reporter: jones claimed it was a government plot. a false flag. the grieving parents, crisis actors. >> and you've got parents laughing going, ha-ha, and they walk over to the camera and go -- >> what alex and the crew were 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, well, alex jones maybe got on his show a couple of times and said sandy hook was fake. the reality was, it was an obsession he could not let go of. >> jones' audience ate it up. one infowars article claiming, fbi says no one killed at sandy hook was viewed more than 3 million times. >> there have been sandy hook fa gnat ticks who show up at family's houses and start banging on their door. they continually harass these parents. >> i don't think you can find a lower person than somebody like alex jones. >> reporter: neil lesslen lost his 6-year-old son jesse in that shooting. >> alex jones has put 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 do no care about the typical things that you would expect a reasonable, rationale person to care about. >> jones would hire pro wrestler dan bedondi to cover sandy hook. >> the sandy hook truth is coming out. you people are going to jail. >> it looks like you were just trying to drum up conspiracies, kind of make a spectacle of yourself, really? >> it was just -- >> it's a complete conspiracy theories. >> no, it's because most of the american public was thinking the same thing. how can we trust -- >> most of the american public, i guarantee you, was not thinking that it was fake and they were crisis actors. >> i didn't sake -- >> crisis actors? >> i didn't say that. i know they're not crisis actors. i went to the grave sites, the memorial everything and was sad. it was heartbreaking to see. >> you were all part of it, dan. >> no, i was just 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 have not done an outrageous wrong to the parents. i, myself, have almost had a psychosis back in the past, where i basically thought everything was staged. now, i'm learning a lot of times, things aren't staged. so i think as a pundit and somebody 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 for 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 in the infowar. you want to fight?! >> this is what all elites end up doing. raping and killing children dressed up like a werewolf. >> you want to fight? get ready, because you're going to get it, asshole. >> alex jones has established

himself as the king of conspiracy theories. and learned early on his lies could make him cash. >> by the books, the film, 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 idei've produced -- >> at first, jones was selling dvds and survival gear. >> the globalists are filling our water with radioactive isotopes. >> if you go and look at the infowars store, it's a mall of things to buy if you think the world is ending. >> in 2013, jones discovered 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 femmeininize men.

>> he becames sastronomically rich. >> 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 like three or four people that have family or themselves have brain tumors suddenly, kids, from fungus. >> reporter: when jones pushed a new product and hyped concerns about bacteria and fungus, he raked in more than $800,000 in two days. >> when i went to austin and spoke to alex about how much they actually make, it was on another planet. >> a staggering amount? >> totally staggering. >> how long until you go live? >> five minutes. >> kaylin robinson had inside access to the infowars operation. >> he'll say, buy these products, buy these products, and the first thing he'll say after he goes into a briefing room after a show, what were the sales? 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 very first private-labeled product that he put out, which was an iodine supplement called survival shield. >> fukushima blows sky high. >> the iodine drops were marketed as protection 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 giger counter. we just posted video saying that we weren't founding evaluated 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 like, okay, 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 guchyardi said in a twourt court document obtained by cnn, he would write about products 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 that are going unreported. >> viewers won't told guchyardi was also getting a cut of the supplement business. >> i think it's important for people to understand that they are 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 really is what it is, is a con. >> you have the great brain pill. >> he would joke about people that would buy the products. when i first met alex, i said that i had bought his brain force thing. and then he was like, 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 back into the business, making sure his show looked like a real newscast. >> this is the third studio we've built. >> and everyone is rushing around 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 and saying completely outlandish, insane, ridiculous, over-the-top thing. it was a very strange contrast. >> how does he decide what goes on that show? >> it all comes from jones' brain. >> i can't keep track of all of this califorap anymore. >> you can tell a lot of it's off the cuff, a lot of it is coming from an emotional, 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. jones' emotional place was macho, alpha male, and always on the attack. >> it's time for good people who have the real strength 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. 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. and he's one of us, he's a nationalist. >> i just want to finish by saying that your reputation is amazing. i will not let you down.

>> that moment encapsulate 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. it's sort of a momentum change. >> hillary's into like creepy, weird, sick stuff, man. jones went all in as only he could. hillary clinton, trump's opponent, would be labeled satanic. >> i've talked to people that are in protective details, i mean, they're scared of her. they say, listen, she's a freaking demon and she stinks and so does obama. and i go, like what? sulfur. they smell like hell. >> during the 2016 campaign, jones began targeting democrats, with one of his most unhinged conspiracy theories. >> pizzagate is real. >> pizzagate is a conspiracy

theory that hillary clinton and leading democrats were engaged in a satanic pedophiliac cabal that was meeting in the basement of comic pizza in washington, d.c. >> you have to go investigate it for yourself. >> one of jones' followers did just that. >> he kicked in the kitchen doors and proceeded to shoot at a locked door. the bullets pierced through here. >> behind that locked door, just a closet. james alfontis who owns the restaurant says there's no doubt who's to blame. >> this gunman has been directly motivated by a video by alex jones. every day i get a death threat. it's been five and a half, six 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 theory,

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, an 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. the jones help, the infowar against a democracy was put in motion.

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with trump in office, jones and infowars were riding high. >> i talk to the president and i talk 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. 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 that 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. but i assume it was trying to convince him to come on infowars, which alex really

wanted. >> 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 to 4 million views. >> but behind the scenes, something had changed. zplif to say, i wish i had never met trump. >> social media companies had begun taking tougher stances on hate speech. >> they decided to de-platform my billions and billions of views and millions of followers, off of everything from itunes to google to youtube to spotify. >> jones would blame the scrutiny of infowars on his license plate with trump. caylen robinson captured these candid moments while making a documentary with jones and shared them with cnn. >> i'm so sick of [ muted ] donald trump, man. god, i'm [ muted ] sick of him. but i'm not doing this because i'm kissing his [ muted ] ass, you know. jones struggled with his words, asked for a retake. >> yeah, uh, huh -- this is the

real quote. what i said earlier wasn't accurate, so please use this quote. i'm really glad that i backed donald trump three years ago, three and a half years ago for president, but that said, being sucked into that whole vortex as quite instruction -- i'm sorry. i'm going to get it straight this time. this is really important, what i'm going to say and i'm 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 thought it was a threat, they attacked it and said that i was on trumpb, that it would hurt him. it made trump stronger, made him win the election. 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 that i don't understand.

>> despite his feelings, when trump announced that he would run for re-election, alex jones was right back onboard. >> what the democrats and the globalists are doing is insurrection against the cup. >> 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 right to steal an election, they're ritrying to r an election and we can't let that happen. >> it is no doubt that 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. >> and they'll be hiding, they will pay.

they will be destroyed! because america is rising! if they want to fight, they better believe they've got one! >> immediately after the alex, jones would appear at rallies across the country, with his bull horne. >> joe biden, burp in hell. >> and an armored vehicle. resurrecting the slogan that roger stone had coined in 2016. stop the steal. [ chanting: stop the steal ] >> raising money, firing up crowds, running sales on inno wars and calling his followers to action. >> everybody needs to be around that white house supporting it. they need to see patriots in the streets of d.c. [ chanting: alex ] [ chanting: 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 firebrands, and when you are doing that, it's kind of an exponential growth, like, how outrageous you have to be. >> undeon 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 start going to d.c. now. don't wait. go to d.c. go to d.c. go to d.c. go to the white house. just go to the white house! go! 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 a big donor came through and took care of that for us. it's not about me bragging, it's just about people knowing the history. >> as crowds rallied in washington, d.c. on the night before the 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! >> 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, climbs steps packed with rioters and called for peace, but also revolution. [ chanting: 1776 ] >> jones sees it all and takes off. [ chanting: 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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as federal agents zeroed in on january 6th -- >> love you, alex jones! >> alex jones' influence was on

display. >> you want to fight? you better believe you've got one! >> his own employees face criminal charges, from an infowars editor who streamed the riot. >> feels good to be in the capitol, baby! >> to infowars host aaron shroyer who was right by jones' side. 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 that 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 going to these rallies? >> infowars. >> two men linked to jones face the most serious charges filed in the january 6th riot, seditious conspiracy. oathkeeper founder stewart

rhodes, a frequent infowars guest, who phone contained an 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 have you got to say? >> jones has not been charged, but cnn has learned that january 6th select committee investigators want to 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 a hundred times today during the interrogation. on advice of counsel, i am asserting my fifth amendment right to remain silent. >> jones says he refused to answer the committee's questions

about january 6th, but told his infowars audience he knew nothing about a plot. >> they already know i didn't do anything. i didn't plan any violence. i was even talking about, everybody should be peaceful. >> he was saying that 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. >> his former employees are now convinced, jones and infowars are a 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 caylen robinson six months to break away. >> what do you say to the people who are wrapped up in this war of infowars and believe these conspiracies?

>> i would just tell them directly that alex doesn't care about them and that 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 pressures 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 thing that can hold jones account able is a lawsuit. >> and lawsuits filed by the families of sandy hook victims are started to have impact. a jury awarded the families of two more than $49 million in the first trial, those 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 and i think it's a terrible event and i think we need to protect our children from mental ill psychopaths and i think there was a cover-up, because they had warnings, the fbi move 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 in s and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone with every text message you've 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. >> bankstonton says the januaryh 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 infowarsstore.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.

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which side are you on? americans who believe liberty and justice are for all, or traitors inciting violence against our country and trying to take away our freedoms? which side are you on? people who work for a living and care for our families, or the trump republicans who block everything our families need? this november, it's time to show which side you're on. vote for democrats. ff pac is responsible for the content of this ad.

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