Government

Alex Jones Sues Jan. 6 Committee Citing Compelling Legal Theory Of YOU AIN'T MY DADDY!

It's just like all the other Jan. 6 LOLsuits, but LOUDER.

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Alex Jones of InfoWars (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

On their last two court outings, Alex Jones and his lawyer Norman Pattis managed to score death penalty sanctions from judges in both Connecticut and Texas. After stonewalling discovery for upwards of a year, the agitprop podcaster and his trusty sidekick netted default judgments in favor of families of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting whom Jones had accused of being “crisis actors.” The cases now go directly to a jury to determine damages.

After that rousing success, the pair are back to take on the January 6 Select Committee, joining the herd of protest organizers filing lawsuits in federal court in DC to block subpoena by the Committee. To his very minimal credit, Jones does not claim executive privilege for his communications as Steve Bannon did. But other than that, it’s par for the loony course.

Here’s the hyper-caffeinated opening graf:

This is an action to protect individual liberties and rights as old as the United States Constitution itself, rights that the United States Congress now seeks to suspend in coercive secret proceedings specifically designed to satiate a political witch hunt, bypass constitutional safeguards, and hijack the role of the Executive Branch while threatening criminal prosecution against anyone who dares to assert his rights and liberties against its demands.

Jones goes on to describe Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom sit on the Committee as “purportedly a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives,” although he argues that accepting the appointment as Vice Chair means that Cheney has switched parties and is now a Democrat.

BREAKING: Liz Cheney to caucus with Democrats. Must credit Alex Jones.

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Like his fellow LOLsuit compatriots, Jones tells a whopper about how the Committee came to include only two Republicans — purportedly! — accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of refusing to appoint any of the members nominated by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In reality, after she rejected Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, McCarthy yanked his remaining three nominees and refused to participate at all.

Similarly, Jones echoes the demand that the court adjudicate House rules and nullify Committee subpoenas because there is no ranking member, and/or because the Committee is engaged in law enforcement, not legislation. All the cool kids are still making this argument, despite the fact that the DC Circuit just affirmed that the Committee is engaged in a legitimate legislative investigation.

In a section captioned, “A Continuation Of Impeachment & A Well-Rehearsed Playbook,” Jones claims the Committee’s subpoenas don’t count because Rep. Adam Schiff admitted in his book that he was very mad at Donald Trump during the attack on January 6 when the members of congress were huddled in a safe room. So Jones would like the court to block congressional subpoenas, please and thank you, so that Schiff can’t do “perjury traps” to him “with the express goal of teeing [him] up for criminal prosecution.”

Jones further argues that the subpoena violates his First Amendment rights, both as a journalist and because it compels him to speak about a legally protected exercise of free speech. Although he professes his intention to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions, Jones speculates that the Committee might grant him immunity from prosecution or use its inherent contempt power to lock him in a broom closet in the Rayburn Building, and so the court should relieve him of the obligation to appear at all.

And while the judicial fairy is granting wishes, she can block the subpoena for his phone records, too because “The Stored Communications Act provides that ‘a person or entity providing electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication while in electronic storage by that service.’” The Committee is seeking metadata, not “the contents of a communication,” but this is a LOLsuit, so LOL.

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In conclusion, the court should issue “a declaratory judgment that the Select Committee is not a lawfully constituted committee and that its actions to date have been wholly without legal authority,” plus nine other declarative and injunctive forms of relief, and award Jones a sparkly rainbow unicorn.

Okay, that last one is made up. But it’s only slightly less likely than Jones getting the rest of the crazy shit he’s asked for, so HO HO HO.

Jones v. Select Committee To Investigate The January 6 Attack On The United States Capitol [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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