Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, asks Alex Jones questions about text messages during trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Wednesday Aug. 3, 2022.
Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool
Alex Jones’ cell phone leak includes “intimate messages” with Roger Stone, a lawyer said.
The House committee probing the Capitol riot wants the phone contents, the attorney added.
The contents of Jones phone were inadvertently sent to an attorney for the Sandy Hook parents who sued Jones.
Alex Jones’ cell phone leak includes “intimate messages” with former Trump political adviser Roger Stone, according to a lawyer for Sandy Hook parents.
And the House committee probing the Capitol riot wants the details, the attorney confirmed on Thursday.
The contents of the far-right conspiracy theorist’s phone were inadvertently sent to Mark Bankston, a lawyer representing the Sandy Hook parents who have sued Jones for defamation.
“Things like Mr. Jones and his intimate messages to Roger Stone are not confidential. They are not trade secrets. None of them,” Bankston told a Texas judge after Jones’ defense lawyer called for a mistrial in Jones’ defamation damages trial.
Jones’ lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, also filed for an emergency motion to protect the contents of Jones’ phone that wound up in Bankston’s possession.
Bankston disclosed during Thursday’s hearing that the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection has asked him to turn over the contents of Jones’ phone.
“I am under request from various federal agencies and law enforcement to provide that phone, absent a ruling from you saying, ‘You cannot do that Mr. Bankston,’ I intend to do so,” Bankston told Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble.
The judge noted that the House committee can subpoena the contents of Jones’ phone.
“They know about them. They know they exist. They know you have them. I think they’re going there either way,” said Gamble who denied Reynal’s motion for a mistrial as she explained she won’t “seal up the entire phone.”
In a dramatic courtroom moment on Wednesday, Bankston announced that Jones’ attorney’s “messed up” and sent him a copy of Jones’ entire phone contents going back two years.
Jones is in court after the judge found him liable for defaming two Sandy Hook parents by falsely claiming the 2012 massacre at the Newton, Connecticut, elementary school was a “hoax.”
A jury in the civil case is now deliberating to decide how much Jones must pay in compensatory damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis — one of the 26 killed in the mass shooting.
The parents are seeking $150 million in compensatory damages from Jones.