WASHINGTON – A lawyer for the plaintiffs who are suing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Monday turned over more than two years of text messages from Mr. Jones’ phone to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including messages showing Mr. Jones was in contact with allies of former President Donald J. Trump.
But the files do not appear to include text messages from the period of most interest to the committee: the day of Jan. 6, 2021, and the weeks before the attack, according to people familiar with the production of the documents.
Although the phone data was recovered in mid-2021, the most recent message is from mid-2020, according to Mark Bankston, who represents the Sandy Hook parents who are suing Mr. Jones for defamation over the lies he spread about the 2012 school shooting. That time period is before Mr. Jones became involved in plans to rally a pro-Trump crowd in Washington to march on Capitol Hill as Mr. Trump fought to stay in office despite his defeat at the polls.
The text messages received by the committee on Monday – contained in a large file of documents and other information from Mr. Jones’ phone – include some that indicate Mr. Jones was in contact with Trump allies, a person familiar with the messages said. .
Mr. Bankston has said they included texts with political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. Mr. Bankston received the phone details of Mr. Jones, which had been sent to him by mistake.
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Of the nearly 250 recipients of the texts, most are employees of Mr. Jones and contractors and members of his family, some of whom are involved in his company.
In court last week in Texas, Mr. Bankston said he planned to turn over the texts to the committee, which had contacted him to obtain them, unless Judge Maya Guerra Gamble objects. Late Friday, the judge said he had no objection.
Mr. Bankston said at the time that he had heard from “various federal agencies and law enforcement” about the material.
The House committee has been pressing for the texts of Mr. Jones for months, saying they could be relevant to understanding his role in helping organize the rally on the Ellipse near the White House that preceded the riots. In November, the panel issued subpoenas to compel testimony from Mr. Jones and communications related to January 6, including his phone records.
The committee also subpoenaed the communications of Timothy D. Enlow, who worked as a bodyguard for Mr. Jones on January 6.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Enlow has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the committee’s subpoenas. Mr. Jones appeared before the panel in January and later said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nearly 100 times.
Although Mr. Jones declined to share information with the committee, saying the committee had already obtained text messages from him.
According to the committee of January 6, Mr. Jones helped arrange a donation from Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to the Publix Super Markets fortune, to provide what she described as “80 percent” of the funding for the Jan. 6 rally and indicated that he was told by White House officials to lead a march to the Capitol, where Mr. Trump would speak.
Mr. Jones and Mr. The Stones were also among the group of Trump allies meeting in and around the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, or staying at what some Trump advisers treated as a war room for their efforts to get the members of Congress opposed to Electoral College Certification.