Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Apologizes For Spreading Fake ‘Pizzagate’ Story

RadioPatrol said:

Its not like he had a reputation to begin with

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RadioPatrol said:

http://tunein.com/radio/options/The-Alex-Jones-Show-p20008/

That's odd I didn't even know InfoWars has a radio affiliates affected too and that's uncertain if that's still going to exist after this recent fiasco.

The first time I ever heard of InfoWars was because it was trending on YouTube and that's probably where most people have heard of Alex Jones. How are radio stations going to deal with him now since somebody faced a verdict recently all because either your staff pushed this unverified allegations into the public and it was aired on YouTube. This is where the shooter apparently got the allegations from.

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TheBigA said:

My point wasn't about him, but the pizzeria. Where do they go to get their business back, now that it's been connected with this?

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Some time after it was published, the first video was removed from Infowars. (It has been preserved on YouTube.) And then, almost one month to the day after Alefantis sent the letter to Jones, the second video was posted -- after a heads-up from Jones' attorney to Gottlieb.
There's reason to believe that the timing was not coincidental. Under the law in Texas, where Jones is based, a potential defendant in a defamation suit has 30 days to retract after receiving a request to do so in order to avoid punitive damages. Jones' apology came in just under the wire.
Efforts to reach Jones on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
After Jones' retraction on Friday, Alefantis said in a statement that he was "pleased that Mr. Jones has apologized and admitted that he and his employees repeatedly spread falsehoods about me and my restaurant."
"I wish that he would have made this admission and apology months ago," Alefantis said. "And his apology, while welcome, does nothing to address the harm he and his company have done to me, my business, and my community."
Gottlieb, who said all legal options are "still on the table," concurred with his client.
"A retraction that comes in late March is a little bit late to remedy all of the damages that was done to James," he said.

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Michael Gottlieb, Alefantis’s lawyer, pointed out to Kludt that this was Jones’ second attempt at a retraction, with the first being an almost hour-long video that mixed a retraction in with claims that others floated the Pizzagate theory to divert attention away from actual pedophilia. Jones eventually deleted it, though others have reposted it. “I don’t think it was adequate,” said Gottlieb, who added that the video “re-victimized” Alefantis.

As for the latest video with its much more direct and succinct reiteration?

“A retraction that comes in late March is a little bit late to remedy all of the damages that was done to James,” Gottlieb told Kludt. For Jones’ part, he posted another video where he pledged to push back against actual sex trafficking more, which he claimed included “documented” claims about the United Nations being involved in such activities.

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It's one thing to accuse public officials, without evidence, of heinous crimes: as "public figures" under libel law, they have few protections against even the most absurd slander. Private citizens are another matter, and Jones' letter apologizes several times – "I made comments about Mr. Alefantis that in hindsight I regret," intoned Jones, "and for which I apologize to him." Jones also "regret any negative impact" that Infowars postings may have had on the restaurant or its employees. While Jones denies that Alefantis has any "legal claim" against him, it's clear that Jones' lawyers understood they better scramble before the restaurateur concludes otherwise. (It wasn't long before Jones returned to claiming baselessly that there is indeed a worldwide child-trafficking ring involving prominent Democrats, including Bill Clinton – who, as a public figure, won't be able to sue.)

In December, however, the Infowars site briefly hosted posts making similar accusations against Austin restaurant chain East Side Pies, including brooding "undercover" videos speculating upon imaginary, hideous activities by staff or patrons. ("Pizzagate Targets East Side Pies," Dec. 16, 2016) The videos were eventually pulled down, but not before they generated phone harassment at the restaurant and apparently at least one act of vandalism on a delivery truck. Certainly Jones owes an apology to East Side Pies – not to mention to the rest of Austin, for having built his fortune on this sort of cockamamie, vicious, manufactured nonsense for decades.

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RadioPatrol said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...9aa75d3ec57_story.html?utm_term=.2b860a2f7f90

Now the Washington Post does an editorial why Infowars apologized and the ulterior motives of the move. Yes and this included the Edgar Welch Verdicts plus a threat of a lawsuit from one of the people Edgar Welch and others accused of a scandal.

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b-turner said:

The best comparison ever: Alex Jones: the Brother Stair of talk radio. That is spot on. Now be careful, those invisible black helicopters are monitoring you and ready to swoop down and take you off to a FEMA concentration camp where you'll survive off freeze-dried meals forever.

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You have to wonder how Edgar Welch feels about that. He’s the North Carolina man who shot up a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., last year because he believed a tale spread by Jones and others that it was the headquarters of a child-molestation ring run by Hillary Clinton. He faces the possibility of many years in prison when he is sentenced in June.

You have to wonder how Leonard Pozner feels about it, too. He’s been getting death threats and has been challenged to prove that his son Noah ever existed, all because Jones and others claimed the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in which Noah and 25 others were killed, was a hoax. He faces the rest of his life without his child.

Finally, you have to wonder how Donald Trump feels about it. The so-called president has professed admiration for Jones and has built his worldview, such as it is, around a Jones-like belief that a tangled skein of conspiracies explains virtually everything in life that refutes, frustrates, or embarrasses him. We face four years of him steering the ship of state.

As regards the lawyer’s claim, there are two possible conclusions. One: He’s telling the truth, and Jones never believed the garbage he vomited. Or two: Jones is trying to hoax the court.

Not that it matters which is true. Either way, Jones has hurt people and ruined lives. Either way, he has helped damage the country.

We now live in the United States of Confusion, a nation of alternative realities and alternative facts where reasoned and informed political debate are all but impossible because too many of us prize ideology above factuality. A coterie of media charlatans eagerly caters to that intellectual flaccidity, and Jones was loud among them, so there is a certain satisfaction in seeing him revealed as a hypocrite and fraud.

But the feeling is fleeting. After all, given the gullibility of his followers, there is no reason to believe this will be the end of him — or what he represents.

Jones fills a need. Frightened people seek easy ways to comprehend the big, bad world. Alternative facts and realities are among the easiest. And never mind the damage that is done, the ignorance that is fostered, the pain that is caused.

Meantime the rest of us — dare we still say, “most” of us? — muddle through actual reality using actual facts to confront the big, bad world. It is not easy.

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A North Carolina man who mounted an armed siege of a Washington, D.C., pizza joint after being convinced it hid a child sex ring tied to Hillary Clinton apologized for his “foolish and reckless” actions in a letter to his judge.

Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22 for assault and firearms charges stemming from his bizarre Dec. 4 takeover of Comet Pizza.

In a hand-written note included in a filing to U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the 28-year-old said he is “truly sorry for endangering the safety of any and all bystanders who were present that day. Unfortunately, I can’t change what I did, but I think I owe it to the families and the community to apologize for my mistakes.”

One of those errors in judgment was believing an outlandish, online conspiracy theory that the Comet, a popular family restaurant, secretly harbored a child sex ring that was linked to Clinton and other Democratic leaders.

Prosecutors have asked that Welch receive a 4 1/2-year sentence, calling on the court to help disarm “malicious and misguided” Internet rumors that might lead their audiences to violence.

“A significant sentence is required to deter other people from pursuing vigilante justice based only on their YouTube feed,” assistant U.S. attorneys Demian S. Ahn and Sonali D. Patel wrote. “The fact that no one was shot was entirely the product of good luck.”

After watching YouTube videos that aimed to corroborate the so-called “Pizzagate” rumor, Welch drove from Salisbury to Washington in early December.

“Raiding a pedo ring, possibly sacrificing [sic] the lives of a few for the lives of many,” Welch wrote in one of several text messages to friends, according to the Washington Post. In another message, he said he was “Standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own back yard.”

During his drive, Welch also texted his girlfriend a Bible verse about being anointed by God and recorded a message in which he expressed the hope that his two daughters would one day understand what he had done, according to the Post.

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