Alex Jones says he paid $500,000 for rally that led to Capitol riot

Infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said his media company paid for the rally in Washington DC on 6 January that preceded the ill-fated insurrection at the US Capitol.

Mr Jones explained his involvement in a video he posted from Washington DC on the day of the riots.

"When I tell you this, it's not to brag about my connection to this embattled president," he said. "No one would book the Ellipse, no one would book the other areas. No one would pay for it. We went and paid for it."

Mr Jones said that 80 per cent of the money used in the bookings was provided by a donor.

"It cost close to half a million dollars," he said.

He then claims the White House asked him to lead the march to the Capitol. In his words, the Secret Service was supposed to pull him out of the front row of Donald Trump's speech about a half hour before it ended and move him to the march starting point.

However, due to the large numbers of people who were still arriving even as Mr Trump spoke, Mr Jones ended up stuck between the group of people watching the president's speech and a second group that was already marching on the Capitol building.

He then claimed - erroneously - that an army of “antifa” was there, and blamed the rioting at the Capitol on them.

“And so, by the time I got out there 20 minutes, 30 minutes before Trump finished his speech there were already hundreds of thousands of people ahead of me marching. And before Trump ever took the stage, antifa, dressed up - over a hundred of them - as patriots, was there,” he said.

Sarah Palin and Rep. Matt Gaetz - who is loyal to Mr Trump - have also lied about the involvement of antifascists at the Capitol.

Mr Jones was reportedly seen later in the day, standing on top of a car near the Capitol building and shouting into a bullhorn.

Though the InfoWars host is never far from headlines, he drew attention after making a perceived threat against Joe Biden.

Mr Jones told rally-goers at the "Million MAGA March" that Mr Biden would be removed from office "one way or the other," which prompted calls for the FBI and Secret Service to launch investigations.

The conspiracy theorist has also publicly peddled QAnon conspiracies. Ashili Babbit, the woman who was shot and killed while breaking into the Capitol, was a QAnon adherent.

"We will never back down to the Satanic paedophile, globalist New World Order and their walking-dead reanimated corpse Joe Biden, and we will never recognize him," Mr Jones said during the Million MAGA March.

The belief in a global cabal of demonic pedophiles that only Mr Trump is working to stop is a central tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

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