Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist referenced repeatedly in the federal indictment charging Roger Stone, has sued Infowars publisher Alex Jones for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and assault.
Mr. Jones, Infowars and its parent company, Free Speech Systems, LLC, are among the defendants listed in a $50 million lawsuit brought Thursday on behalf of both Mr. Corsi and Larry Klayman, a lawyer and founder of the Judicial Watch conservative group.
Filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit alleges Mr. Jones and his Infowars empire have conspired with Mr. Stone, President Trump’s embattled former election campaign adviser, to intimidate and threaten the plaintiffs “as part of their latest scheme for notoriety, fame and profit.”
“Plaintiffs have been damaged by these false and misleading statements because they severely injured Plaintiff Corsi and Plaintiff Klayman in their profession and businesses, as well as severely injured and damaged them personally, financially and in terms of their good will and reputations,” Mr. Klayman wrote.
Speaking to The Washington Times on Friday, Mr. Jones said his legal team is “100 percent confident this lawsuit will be dismissed,” calling it “completely and absolutely frivolous and without any merit.”
A conservative author who previously made waves for peddling the baseless “birther” theory about former President Barack Obama, Mr. Corsi, 72, was hired by Infowars to lead the right-wing website’s D.C. bureau in early 2017. They have since parted ways, however, and he recently filed lawsuits blaming his termination on both Mr. Stone and the special counsel’s ongoing Russia probe, among others.
Mr. Stone, 66, has frequently appeared on the talk show hosted by Mr. Jones and another under the Infowars umbrella, War Room, providing each with platforms for making comments unbecoming of Mr. Corsi and Mr. Klayman, according to their lawsuit.
Mr. Corsi “seemed to be extremely mentally degraded to the point of what I would call dementia,” Mr. Jones said in an October 2018 segment cited in the lawsuit. More recently, Mr. Stone appeared in a January 2019 segment in which he compared Mr. Corsi to Judas Iscariot and called Mr. Klayman “incompetent,” “a numbskull” and possibly “the single worst lawyer in America,” the latest lawsuit noted.
“Defendants, at a minimum, acted recklessly, as they have known Plaintiff Corsi for a long time, and even worked with him and are also familiar with Plaintiff Klayman, so they were well aware that the statements made by Stone, and their own false, misleading, malicious and defamatory statements were, indeed, false, as well as their ratification of the malicious false statements published by Stone on their networks and media sites,” Mr. Klayman wrote.
“As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ wrongful conduct, Plaintiffs suffered conscious pain, suffering, severe emotional distress and the fear of imminent serious bodily injury or death, and other mental and physical injuries, and Plaintiffs were severely harmed and damaged thereby.”
Mr. Stone was indicted earlier this year as a result of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 race with seven counts of obstruction, perjury and witness tampering. Prosecutors claim he lied to Congress by failing to disclose to lawmakers conversations he had with Mr. Corsi during the election about the WikiLeaks website and its plans to publish sensitive Democratic documents allegedly sourced by Russian state-sponsored hackers.
He pleaded not guilty to all counts but is pubically barred from discussing the case under a subsequently imposed gag-order.
A lawyer for Mr. Stone did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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