1 year ago
Alex Jones intends to resist efforts by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to compel him to testify in this month’s trial of two Donald Trump co-defendants, his attorney said Tuesday.
Norm Pattis, an attorney for the far-right broadcaster, said Jones has nothing to offer in the trial — and that even if a court were to order him to testify, he would simply plead the Fifth, as he did when subpoenaed to testify to the House Jan. 6 select committee last year.
“We’re not going to help Fani’s fantasy life come true any more than we did that of the J6 committee,” Pattis said.
Willis indicated her intent to compel Jones’ testimony in a court filing posted publicly Tuesday. The filing indicated that Jones had contacts with Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who helped craft Trump’s last-ditch strategy to upend Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and keep Trump in power. Chesebro and attorney Sidney Powell are slated to go on trial Oct. 23, the first batch of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to face jurors.
“[Jones] possesses unique knowledge concerning communications between himself and Kenneth Chesebro and other known and unknown individuals involved in the multi-state, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 3, 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere,” Willis wrote.
Recently unearthed videos show Chesebro walking alongside Jones’ entourage on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, in the restricted area of the Capitol grounds, but it’s unclear if the two had any previous communications.
Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist with a massive following on InfoWars, was a prominent booster of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and he attended Trump’s speech on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. He helped lead a massive crowd from the speech to the Capitol, which had been breached by the time he arrived. Jones has not been charged for his actions that day but a close associate, Owen Shroyer, who accompanied him on Capitol grounds, was recently sentenced to 60 days in jail for his actions.
To obtain Jones’ testimony — along with dozens of other potential witnesses who reside outside of Georgia — Willis must seek permission from both a judge in her district and in the courts where the witnesses reside. Jones, she noted, lives in Travis County, Texas. His resistance to Willis’ effort to compel his testimony portends a potential wide array of legal fights that could result from Willis’ effort to put on a massive case against all of the alleged co-conspirators.
For example, Willis also signaled on Tuesday that she intends to seek testimony from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. And last week, she indicated plans to call Trump legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, several Republicans who falsely posed as presidential electors in 2020 and attorney Lin Wood.
Willis fought similar battles to obtain testimony during her year-long special grand jury investigation into the matter, initiating legal processes that helped make public the witnesses she was targeting across the country. Some of those witnesses — including Trump allies Mike Flynn, Lindsey Graham, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Chesebro himself — resisted those efforts. But all ultimately lost local and federal court battles on the matter.
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