Jones, Alex (1974- )

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      Alex Jones and Donald Trump: A Fateful Alliance Draws Scrutiny

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      The Infowars host tormented Sandy Hook families and helped elect President Donald J. Trump. His role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is now of growing interest to congressional investigators.The day President Donald J. Trump urged his supporters to “be there, will be wild!” at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Alex Jones spread the message to millions.“This is the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776,” Mr. Jones, the Infowars broadcaster, said on his Dec. 19, 2020, show, which airs live online and on a network of radio stations. Mr. Jones, whose lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting fueled years of threats against the 26 victims’ families, urged his listeners to take action.A little more than two weeks later, Mr. Jones joined his followers at the Capitol as a behind-the-scenes organizer — a crucial role in the riot that is under increasing scrutiny by congressional investigators.It is part of a reckoning Mr. Jones faces on multiple fronts. He is still fighting a half-dozen defamation lawsuits filed by the targets of his false claims, including the relatives of 10 Sandy Hook victims. Late last year the Sandy Hook families won four default judgments against him after he for years resisted court orders, and in upcoming trials, juries will decide how much he must pay them.For Jan. 6, Mr. Jones helped secure at least $650,000 from a Publix grocery-store heiress, Julie Fancelli, an Infowars fan, to underwrite Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse the morning of the attack, $200,000 of which was deposited into one of Mr. Jones’s business accounts, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack said. The night before the riot Mr. Jones was at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, where Trump aides and allies had set up an outpost. He has longtime ties to at least a half-dozen people arrested after the riot, including the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, still a regular guest on Infowars, and Joseph Biggs, a former Infowars employee and Proud Boys leader.The House committee has subpoenaed Mr. Jones, and included a three-page list seeking his related communications and financial records. The panel is also seeking Mr. Jones’s communications with Mr. Trump, his family and anyone from the White House or Congress in the days before the riot. Questioned by the panel this year, Mr. Jones invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times, and is trying to block the committee’s demand for records in court.Whatever the outcome of the Jan. 6 investigation, Mr. Jones’s journey from Sandy Hook to the assault on the Capitol is a reflection of how conspiracy theories in the United States have metastasized and corroded public discourse in the digital age. A defender of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a former regular on RT, the Kremlin-funded international television outlet, Mr. Jones espoused such extreme views of American democratic society — he has cast airport security screenings as a plot to usurp Americans’ freedoms — that in 2011 RT stopped inviting him on air.But after Mr. Trump appeared live in an interview on Infowars’ website in December 2015, Mr. Jones traveled from the fringes to become part of a newly radicalized Republican Party. Infowars grossed more than $50 million annually during the Trump presidency by selling diet supplements, body armor and other products on its website, records filed in court indicate. During and after the Jan. 6 riot, Infowars promoted its merchandise alongside graphic videos, including footage by an Infowars cameraman of the shooting death of a pro-Trump rioter, Ashli Babbitt, by a Capitol Police officer during the attack.Mr. Jones did not respond to messages seeking comment. His lawyer, Norm Pattis, said his client had done nothing wrong on Jan. 6. Video footage from the Capitol that day shows Mr. Jones using a bullhorn to try to discourage people from rioting.“Over many years Infowars has become a go-to source for people deeply suspicious of the government, so it should come as no surprise that many of the attendees at the rally had passed through Infowars’ doors,” Mr. Pattis said. “But that doesn’t mean any of them are guilty of criminal conspiracy or misconduct.”Dan Friesen, whose podcast, “Knowledge Fight,” explores Mr. Jones’s place in America’s conspiracist tradition, said that people should not be shocked by what happened on Jan. 6, given Mr. Jones’s history. “This kind of flare-up just seemed inevitable,” he said.A Trump campaign rally in Dallas in 2019.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressMr. Jones owes some of his core conspiracy themes to Gary Allen, a speechwriter for the former Alabama governor George Wallace who in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the far-right John Birch Society’s most revered writers and thinkers. As a teenager, Mr. Jones found Mr. Allen’s 1971 “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” on his father’s bookshelf, and came to share Mr. Allen’s view that a cabal of global bankers and power brokers, not elected officials, controlled American policy. Mr. Allen, who died in 1986, sold his theories by mail order in books, filmstrips and cassettes, a marketing model later adopted by Infowars.Mr. Jones got his start in broadcasting in the early 1990s with simultaneous shows on the Austin radio station KJFK and on Austin community access TV. In 1993, a siege by federal law enforcement ended in an inferno at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, killing about 80 Davidians and four law enforcement officers. Mr. Jones asserted, evidence to the contrary, that the sect and its leader, David Koresh, were a peaceful religious community marked by the government for murder. He raised $93,000 from his listeners to rebuild the compound’s church.The deed made Mr. Jones a celebrity among “patriot” militia members, including some involved in armed standoffs with the federal government. In 1995, Mr. Jones pushed bogus claims that the government plotted the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including 19 children. The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, had also expressed rage at the Branch Davidian compound’s destruction.Mr. Jones and his wife at the time, Kelly Jones, founded Infowars around 1999, when they began producing feature-length, conspiracy-themed videos that they sold by mail or gave away, urging people to pass them around and spread the word.After December 2012, when Mr. Jones falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a government pretext for draconian gun control measures, traffic to his website surged. In 2013, at a gathering in Dallas marking the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Mr. Jones met Roger J. Stone Jr., a Trump friend and adviser shunned by mainstream Republicans.Mr. Stone, who saw a valuable new constituency for Mr. Trump in Infowars’ disaffected audience, joined the show as a host and brokered Mr. Trump’s December 2015 interview with Mr. Jones. In that interview, broadcast on the Infowars website, Mr. Trump joined Mr. Jones in casting America as a nation besieged by “radical Muslims” and immigrants, and predicted he would “get along very well” with Mr. Putin. He ended by praising Mr. Jones’s “amazing reputation.”The next year Mr. Jones was a V.I.P. invitee to Mr. Trump’s speech accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where the Infowars broadcaster stood on the convention floor with tears streaming down his face as Mr. Trump spoke.Mr. Jones on the first day of the Republican National Convention in 2016.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesThe Trump era also brought Mr. Jones new scrutiny. In 2017, he dodged a lawsuit by publicly apologizing and removing from Infowars his shows promoting Pizzagate, the lie that top Democrats were trafficking children from Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria. The conspiracy theory inspired a gunman to enter the restaurant and fire a rifle inside. No one was hurt, but the episode shocked the capital and many Americans. By 2019, Mr. Jones had been barred from all major social media platforms for violating rules banning hate speech.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3The potential case against Trump. More

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      House Panel Subpoenas Roger Stone and Alex Jones in Capitol Riot Inquiry

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      Investigators summoned five more allies of former President Donald J. Trump as they dug further into the planning and financing of rallies before the Jan. 6 attack.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Capitol attack issued five new subpoenas on Monday, focusing on allies of former President Donald J. Trump who helped draw crowds to Washington before the riot on Jan. 6, including the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. and the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.The subpoenas, which come after the committee has interviewed more than 200 witnesses, indicate that investigators are intent on learning the details of the planning and financing of rallies that drew Mr. Trump’s supporters to Washington based on his lies of a stolen election, fueling the violence that engulfed Congress and delayed the formalization of President Biden’s victory.“We need to know who organized, planned, paid for and received funds related to those events, as well as what communications organizers had with officials in the White House and Congress,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee.Mr. Stone promoted his attendance at the rallies on Jan. 5 and 6, and solicited support to pay for security through the website stopthesteal.org. While in Washington, he used members of the Oath Keepers as personal security guards; at least one of them has been indicted on charges that he was involved in the Capitol attack.In a statement, Mr. Stone said he had not yet been served with the subpoena and denied any involvement with the violence.“I have said time and time again that I had no advance knowledge of the events that took place at the Capitol on that day,” he said.Mr. Jones helped organize the rally at the Ellipse near the White House before the riot — including by facilitating a donation from Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to the Publix Super Markets fortune — to provide what he described as “80 percent” of the funding, the House committee said. Mr. Jones has said that White House officials told him that he was to lead a march to the Capitol, where Mr. Trump would speak, according to the committee.Mr. Stone and Mr. Jones were among the group of Trump allies meeting in and around the Willard Intercontinental Hotel near the White House the day before the riot.Mr. Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, was seen flashing his signature Nixon victory sign to supporters as members of the Oath Keepers protected him. He was also photographed on Jan. 5 with Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser who has also been subpoenaed. But Mr. Stone has claimed that he was leaving town as rioters stormed the Capitol.Mr. Stone said he had decided against a plan to “lead a march” from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to a video posted on social media.Mr. Jones conducted an interview of Mr. Flynn from the Willard on Jan. 5 in which the men spread the false narrative of a stolen election. Mr. Jones was then seen among the crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters the next day, amplifying false the claims but also urging the crowd to be peaceful. Among those who marched alongside him to the Capitol was Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” effort who has also been issued a subpoena, the committee said.“The White House told me three days before, ‘We’re going to have you lead the march,’” Mr. Jones said on his internet show the day after the riot. “Trump will tell people, ‘Go, and I’m going to meet you at the Capitol.’”The panel is also demanding documents and testimony from Dustin Stockton and his fiancée, Jennifer L. Lawrence, who assisted in organizing a series of rallies after the election advancing false claims about its outcome.Mr. Stockton was concerned that the rally at the Ellipse would lead to a march to the Capitol that would mean “possible danger,” which he said “felt unsafe,” the committee said. These concerns were escalated to Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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      Rioters Followed a Long Conspiratorial Road to the Capitol

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRioters Followed a Long Conspiratorial Road to the CapitolThe Capitol extremists and their cheerleaders did not make a giant leap to “Stop the Steal.” A pathway of conspiratorial steppingstones led them there.The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was animated by Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York TimesJan. 27, 2021Updated 9:41 a.m. ETWhen Brendan Hunt was arrested and charged with demanding the “public execution” of Democratic leaders this month, students of American conspiracy theory could hardly be surprised.Two decades ago, Mr. Hunt, a 37-year-old sometime Shakespearean actor, had spread misinformation around the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A decade later, he falsely implicated the federal government in a cover-up of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which killed 20 first graders and six educators. He sowed conspiracy theories around the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and disseminated anti-Semitic tropes on social media. Finally he reached the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump by a vast conspiracy of power brokers in both political parties.For many of the Capitol rioters and others who believe Mr. Trump won, it was not a large leap to “Stop the Steal” from a pathway of conspiratorial steppingstones that included the “Pizzagate” claim of 2016 that Democrats were running a child sex ring in the back of a popular Washington pizza parlor, the debunked allegation that a low-level Democratic National Committee aide was murdered for leaking Hillary Clinton’s emails and many more.Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud, which animated the riot on Jan. 6, have reassembled — virtually, anyway — a cast of characters that go way back. Other conspiratorial theorizers that mass shootings were false flag operations by liberals to promote gun control included Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia; the Infowars impresario Alex Jones; the fired Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy; and the retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor James Fetzer, all of whom then embraced Mr. Trump’s baseless fraud claims. “If you look at these Sandy Hook folks, it’s not like they slipped on a banana peel and believe in Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. This is an expression of a whole worldview, or an expression of personality traits,” Joe Uscinski, an assistant professor at the University of Miami and an author of the book “American Conspiracy Theories,” said in an interview. “You’re not going to change someone’s mind. And even if you did, it wouldn’t matter because you’re going to end up in a game of Whac-a-Mole.”Mr. Hunt visited Newtown, Conn., after the 2012 mass shooting, filming the fenced perimeter and the woods around the abandoned elementary school and going to the home of a man who had sheltered six children who ran from the gunman.Mr. Hunt worked as an assistant analyst in the New York Office of Court Administration’s attorney registration unit. He is the son of a retired family court judge. In December and January, he allegedly posted videos calling for violence in Washington.Brendan Hunt in a picture from his account on the video-hosting site BitChute.According to a Jan. 18 complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York, two days after the Capitol riot Mr. Hunt, who was not in Washington that day, posted a video to a video-sharing site urging violence during President Biden’s inauguration.“We were aware of Brendan Hunt back in 2013 when he was attacking Sandy Hook families,” said Lenny Pozner, whose son was killed at the school, and who founded the HONR Network, an organization of volunteers who seek the removal of harmful online content. “I’m not surprised that he became more radical.”“Once people buy into the concept that the government is an evil organization trying at every turn to harm them, it is easy for people to essentially radicalize themselves and find others who agree,” he added.Mr. Hunt has been assigned a public defender, who declined to comment on Tuesday.Sandy Hook was the first American mass shooting to ignite viral, fantastical claims that it was a phony event staged by the Obama administration as a pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms. Since then virtually every high-profile mass shooting has generated similar theories.Ms. Greene, elected to Congress in November, has for years circulated bogus theories, including around mass shootings. On Tuesday, CNN reported that in 2018 and 2019, Ms. Greene indicated support on her Facebook page for commenters recommending violence against Democratic leaders. In January 2019, CNN reported, Ms. Greene “liked a comment that said ‘a bullet to the head would be quicker’ to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.” In response, Ms. Greene posted a statement on Twitter attributing the inflammatory content to “teams of people” who “manage my pages.”During her 2020 campaign, Politico mined her social media accounts, finding Islamophobic conspiracy theories and the false claim that George Soros, a wealthy Democratic donor, is a Nazi. After calling the 2020 presidential vote a “fraudulent, stolen election,” Ms. Greene voted on Jan. 6 with 146 other Republicans against certifying the Electoral College count that officially declared Mr. Biden the winner. The day before the Capitol riot, she referred to the Stop the Steal protests as “our 1776 moment.”In 2018 she wrote on Facebook, “The people in power stop the truth and control and stall investigations, then provide cover for the real enemies of our nation.”When a follower from Jamestown, N.Y., posted false claims about the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and said Sandy Hook was “staged,” Ms. Greene responded, “This is all true.” The post was surfaced last week by Media Matters for America, a liberal group that monitors conservative news and media posts.Ms. Greene’s spokesman, Nick Dyer, did not address her false election claims. He referred to her statement on Twitter last week acknowledging the Parkland shooting and blaming “‘gun-free’ school zones” for the massacre.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, elected to Congress in November, has for years circulated bogus theories, including around mass shootings.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“Politicians and Hollywood celebrities are the first to protect themselves with armed security, as you can clearly see by the military fortress around the Capitol,” Ms. Greene wrote.Mr. Jones, another purveyor of election disinformation, spread false Sandy Hook conspiracy claims to millions through his Infowars radio and online show. He has falsely labeled most mass shootings “false flags,” and baselessly claims that the Sept. 11 attacks and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City were government inside jobs.Last week, the Texas Supreme Court allowed three defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook survivors against Mr. Jones to move forward. The lawsuits say Mr. Jones spreads false claims in part to sell merchandise geared toward a conspiracy-minded audience preparing for the end of times.Those suits did not stop Infowars from staging a rally in Washington the night before the Capitol riot. Then on Jan. 6, Mr. Jones broadcast live near the Capitol while an Infowars cameraman filmed the rioters from inside the building, even capturing the moment when one of them, Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.“Our own cameraman followed the crowds into the Senate, and I watched them execute an unarmed woman,” Mr. Jones said.Mr. Jones brought Ali Alexander, a Stop the Steal organizer and a leading election conspiracy promoter, onto his show.Mr. Jones’s ex-wife, Kelly Morales, said she sent video of Mr. Jones’s broadcasts during the riot, most of which she said had since been removed from his website, to the F.B.I. She has been posting excerpts on her Twitter account, @realkellyjones.“Just like Sandy Hook and Pizzagate, Alex knows his actions culminate in violence and harassment,” Ms. Morales said in an interview. She and Mr. Jones are engaged in a court battle stemming from their 2015 divorce.After the Sandy Hook shooting, Mr. Jones repeatedly invited Stewart Rhodes, a founder of the far-right militia Oath Keepers, onto Infowars to discuss the massacre, which they viewed as a threat to the Second Amendment.During one appearance, Mr. Jones suggested that “the solution is to get involved in Oath Keepers.”Now federal law enforcement is investigating the group as central to the Capitol attack. Mr. Rhodes had appeared on Infowars just before the November election, vowing that his members would “stand up and protect people on Election Day” against Democrats who he claimed would be “stealing the election.”At least a half-dozen people arrested after the Capitol riot have been linked to the Oath Keepers. Those arrested include three people charged with conspiracy to commit federal crimes, after recordings emerged that suggest members of the group planned and coordinated their role in the Capitol attack.Infowars and Mr. Jones did not immediately respond to emails and text messages requesting comment.Mr. Tracy, a former journalism professor at Florida Atlantic University, also questioned Sandy Hook, leading to his firing in 2015. He did not protest in Washington on Jan. 6, but he has latched onto 2020 election falsehoods.“The fake news media that have been complicit in U.S. ‘regime change’ over the past four years are now acting as the ideological agency to enforce the unfounded legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election,” he wrote on his blog.In an interview, Mr. Tracy said he also thought the Democratic nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders in 2016 and insisted that “the truth movement” is “becoming much more mainstream.” On his blog, Mr. Tracy posts wild theories about the health risks of 5G networks, communist revolution in America and the Covid Tracking Project.Mr. Tracy contributed to the book “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook,” coedited by Mr. Fetzer, the retired University of Minnesota Duluth professor. Mr. Fetzer moved from Sandy Hook in 2012 to the Boston Marathon bombing a year later, helping to write another book titled “And Nobody Died in Boston, Either.” Mr. Fetzer helped found an outfit called Moon Rock Books, which published false conspiracy theories related to Sept. 11, the John F. Kennedy assassination — longtime obsessions of Mr. Fetzer’s — as well as mass shootings in Parkland, Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla.In late 2019, Mr. Pozner won a $450,000 defamation judgment against Mr. Fetzer. But he has continued to pursue other conspiracy theories, including around the 2020 election.“There actually is a deep state, and they really do not honor the election results nor the will of the people,” Mr. Fetzer wrote on his blog last week. He also posted his approval of Ms. Greene’s Parkland conspiracy theories, saying, “No member of Congress has been willing to speak the truth about it.”Chris Cameron More