November 24, 2021
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is charging ahead with subpoenas on some longtime denizens of Trump World: InfoWars head Alex Jones, self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone, and rally promoters Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, reports Politico.
The committee is also subpoenaing former President Donald Trump’s current spokesperson, Taylor Budowich.
The panel demanded that all of its subpoena targets turn over relevant documents by December 6. Depositions were scheduled for them the following week.
Monday’s batch of subpoenas focuses on the funding and organization of rallies on January 5 and January 6, as well as the march from the rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol.
“I don’t know how this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they’ve got one,” Jones told a crowd at Freedom Plaza in Washington the night before the attack, as PBS detailed.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Jones helped secure funding for the January 6 rally. Jones has said he tried to de-escalate the riot and stop people from breaking into the Capitol, the Journal added.
For Jones, the committee’s demand is just the latest in a series of legal issues. A court last week found him liable for defamation in a lawsuit brought by parents of children killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
In August, a group of Capitol Police officers sued him and a host of other defendant—including Trump himself—alleging civil rights violations. The suit accused Stone of actively participating in “Trump’s strategy to disseminate false claims of election fraud,” and of helping popularize the #StopTheSteal slogan. A process server presented Stone with the lawsuit on September 15 while he was on a talk radio show.
“This is a big, big stack of papers, which is good because we’re out of toilet paper today,” Stone told the hosts.
He later called the suit “baseless, groundless, and unsubstantiated” in an email to CNN.
Stone said in a statement that he had not yet been served by the committee, nor had he seen the details of the information requested, but that he would determine his course of action after reviewing the requests with his lawyer.
“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. “Any statement, claim, insinuation, or report alleging, or even implying, that I had any involvement in or knowledge, whether advance or contemporaneous, about the commission of any unlawful acts by any person or group in or around the U.S. Capitol or anywhere in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, is categorically false.”
Research contact : @politico
