The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots has reportedly received almost two years' worth of text messages sent and received by Alex Jones, a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
The news was broken to CNN by a person familiar with the matter who said that Mark Bankston, the attorney representing two Sandy Hook parents in a recent lawsuit against Jones, had handed over the texts. Jones lost the suit, and the parents won nearly $50 million in damages.
Bankston has not confirmed or denied if he has handed the texts over, but he did tell CNN that he is "cooperating with the committee."
The revelation of Bankston's team receiving the text messages from Jones' attorneys was made while Jones took the stand. Bankston told Jones that his legal team "messed up" when they inadvertently sent him a copy of his phone that included two years of texts.
When Federico Andino Reynal, Jones' attorney, asked Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to order Bankston to destroy the material and not provide it to the House committee, she declined.
"I'm not standing between you and Congress," Gamble said to Bankston. "That is not my job. I'm not going to do that."
As for what texts the committee is interested in, it is not known, according to the report from CNN. However, the source reported that some of the text messages were with Trump allies.
One of those allies was allegedly Fox News host Tucker Carlson who is nervous about the committee receiving the texts, a source close to him told the Daily Beast.
Jones was at the Capitol on the day of the attacks, speaking to the rioters and hyping up the crowd. But Jones has rejected any notion that he had planned to partake in violence. He has even gone as far as to claim that he tried to prevent people from breaking the law.
When speaking with the Jan. 6 committee earlier this year, Jones said he repeatedly asserted the Fifth Amendment in his closed-door deposition.
Nonetheless, the committee has shared their excitement at seeing the texts. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told CNN they want to learn more about the conspiracy theorists' role on the day of the riots.
"Well, we know that his behavior did incentivize some of the Jan. 6 conduct, and we want to know more about that," Lofgren said. "We don't know what we'll find in the texts because we haven't seen them. But we'll look at it and learn more, I'm sure."
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