The Trump-favored conspiracist and founder of InfoWars Alex Jones has claimed, in a custody battle, that his on-air persona is just that.
“He’s playing a character,” Jones’ attorney Randall Wilhite said at a recent pre-trial hearing, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “He is a performance artist.”
Wilhite reportedly said using Jones’ performances on Infowars to judge his capacity as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson on his depiction of the Joker in “Batman.”
Jones ex-wife, Kelly Jones, reportedly said Jones’ infamously unstable Infowars behavior — he recently told House Oversight Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) to “fill your hand,” a reference to a gun duel — had affected their three kids’ lives.
“He’s not a stable person,” she said, according to the American-Statesman. “He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.”
Both accusations were references to recent tirades from Jones against the celebrities.
Jones issued a rare apology in late March for his role in furthering the conspiracy theory that Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., was the center of a child sex ring frequented by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and others.
In his apology, Jones described InfoWars’ coverage as “theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon.”
And he acknowledged the threat against Schiff a few days after it first aired, calling it “clearly tongue-in-cheek and basically art performance, as I do in my rants, which I admit I do, as a form of art.”
“When I say, ‘I’m going to kick your ass,’ it’s the Infowar,” Jones said. “I say every day we’re going to destroy you with the truth.”
Jones interviewed Donald Trump when he was a candidate for president, in December 2015. Jones has since claimed to have heard from Trump since his inauguration, including with invitations to the White House press pool and Mar-a-Lago, though neither Jones nor his InfoWars staff have yet been spotted at either.
After Jones’ claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting was a hoax, families who lost loved ones in the attack have pressured the President to disavow Jones.
Read the full American-Statesman story here.