Mr. Jones’s maneuvers come amid growing recognition among some far-right conspiracy theorists that pushing the boundaries of legal public discourse carries potentially heavy personal consequences. More than 200 of the roughly 800 people arrested after the Jan. 6 riot have pleaded guilty to the charges. Ali Alexander, a “Stop the Steal” organizer who marched with Mr. Jones to the Capitol after Mr. Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, received a grand jury subpoena and is cooperating with the Justice Department investigation.
Mr. Jones portrays himself as a fearless truth teller, defending the First Amendment against government efforts to silence him. But his responses to the Jan. 6 investigation and the Sandy Hook lawsuits suggest he is chiefly interested in protecting his livelihood. Sued for defamation by the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims, Mr. Jones lost the cases last year and has been working to shield his fortune from coming damages awards.
Even as he described his offer to cooperate, Mr. Jones unleashed a barrage of false claims against the government. “My god!” he said on his show last week. “The F.B.I. and Justice Department’s fingerprints are all over this damn thing, and you want to come ask me about it? You want to find out what really happened, why don’t you look in the damn mirror and you can tell me!”
Mr. Jones, who broadcasts his conspiracy theories alongside ads selling diet supplements, doomsday prepper gear, videos and other goods aimed toward his listeners’ distrust of government, reaped revenues of $56 million in 2021, one of his lawyers estimated last week.
After the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Jones bolstered traffic to his Infowars Store while broadcasting lies that the massacre was a staged government pretext for draconian gun control and that the families were “actors” in the plot. In 2018, the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims and an F.B.I. agent implicated in the false claims sued Mr. Jones for defamation in four separate lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas.