Lucas Jackson/Reuters
The fifth day of the Alex Jones custody trial began dramatically as attorneys for the Infowars founder asked for a mistrial over a video from the Joe Rogan radio show that was shown during the previous day’s hearing. The motion was denied by Judge Orlinda Naranjo, as was an earlier mistrial request made by Jones’ attorneys after the video was originally aired. In the video, Jones can be seen discussing the infamous Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump describing how he non-consensually grabs women “by the pussy,” during which Jones dismisses the controversy. Jones attorneys said the clip was edited, and did not show a portion either before or after in which Jones’ reportedly disavowed the eventual president’s comments. The clip was erroneously played in court, though it ran for some time before the legal teams noticed. By then Jones was enraged, and a recess was called. The defense team had meant to air a clip from the same episode in which Jones can be seen smoking marijuana live on-air as part of their evidence against him in the custody battle. On Thursday Judge Naranjo said she “has made it very clear his political beliefs are not relevant”, though the trial has been typified by an inability by Naranjo to clearly define which Infowars videos are inadmissible because they are politics and thus protected and which should be allowed as part of his defense. The use of videos from Infowars has been plagued by technical difficulties and a failure by Kelly Jones’ attorneys to get particularly damaging videos admitted into court. Jones has maintained that his bombastic on-air persona does not reflect how he is with his children, though on Thursday he also stated that “I’m kind and gentle 95% of the time [on Infowars] and with my kids I’m kind and gentle 99.9% of the time.”