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dalton99a

(81,391 posts) Fri Sep 7, 2018, 10:42 PM Sep 2018

Conspiracy Theories Made Alex Jones Very Rich. They May Bring Him Down. (NYT)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/us/politics/alex-jones-business-infowars-conspiracy.html

Conspiracy Theories Made Alex Jones Very Rich. They May Bring Him Down.
By Elizabeth Williamson and Emily Steel
Sept. 7, 2018

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His fundamental insight was that his audience is also a nearly captive market for the variety of goods he peddles via Infowars’ website and his syndicated radio show — products intended to assuage the same fears he stokes.

Infowars and its affiliated companies are private and do not have to report financial results publicly. But by 2014, according to testimony Mr. Jones gave in a court case, his operations were bringing in more than $20 million a year in revenue. Records viewed by The New York Times show that most of his revenue that year came from the sale of products like supplements such as the Super Male Vitality, which purports to boost testosterone, or Brain Force Plus, which promises to “supercharge” cognitive functions.

Court records in a divorce case show that Mr. Jones’s businesses netted more than $5 million in 2014. Court proceedings show that he and his then-wife, Kelly Jones, embarked on plans to build a swimming pool complex around that time featuring a waterfall and dining cabana with a stone fireplace. Mr. Jones bought four Rolex watches in one day in 2014, and spent $40,000 on a saltwater aquarium; the couple’s assets at the time included a $70,000 grand piano, $50,000 in firearms and $752,000 in silver, gold and precious metals, in a safe deposit box, court documents say.

But his problems are mounting. At least five defamation suits against Mr. Jones, including three filed by Sandy Hook families, are moving forward. Last month, a Texas judge ordered Mr. Jones and officers in his web of limited-liability companies to provide depositions to lawyers for the parent of a Sandy Hook victim in coming weeks, testimony that could shed new light on Mr. Jones’s operation.

He is also facing complaints of workplace discrimination from two ex-employees, a fraud and product liability case and a nasty court battle with Ms. Jones, now his ex-wife. She says that the couple have spent a combined $4 million on their four-year battle over custody of their three children and disputes over the business.

At the same time, the crackdown on Mr. Jones in August by the social media giants — he has been largely banned by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify and even Pinterest — poses a severe test by limiting his access to his audience. The early evidence is that the bans have substantially reduced his reach — and that was before a double blow this week when Twitter imposed a permanent ban on his account and the account for Infowars and Apple removed the Infowars app from its store.

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