Trump’s DOJ Drops Alex Jones’s Case After Just 24 Hours

One day after Alex Jones publicly unveiled the Justice Department’s intent to investigate retired FBI Special Agent William Aldenberg, the lawsuit is no more.

Jones presented the inquiry Tuesday as evidence that Trump’s DOJ was willing to go to bat for him. In a letter dated September 15, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin accused Aldenberg—one of the first responders to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School—of personally benefiting from the defamation case brought against the InfoWars host by the victims’ families. But by Wednesday, Martin had changed his tune.

“At this time, I write to inform you that there is no investigation of you or your client,” Martin wrote in his new letter to attorney Chris Mattei, who represented Aldenberg as well as the families of Sandy Hook victims, and who was the recipient of Martin’s original letter. “Because of this, I hereby withdraw my request for information from you or your former client.”

The Sandy Hook trial effectively bankrupted Jones, with the conspiracist ordered to cough up $1.3 billion to the victims of the tragedy he branded as a “hoax.” As part of that decision, the court ordered Jones to pay Aldenberg $90 million.

In his original letter, Martin had pressed Mattei’s office for information relating to Aldenberg’s former employment at the FBI, the framing of his testimony in Jones’s defamation case, and whether Aldenberg had a relationship with communications firm Berlin Rosen for purposes related to “newsjacking,” which the letter did not define.

“Less than 18 hours after calling out Alex Jones and Ed Martin for their corrupt use of the Department of Justice to harass Sandy Hook families and the heroic FBI agent who ran into that school to save any children he could, I am happy to learn that this so-called inquiry has now been withdrawn, if it ever existed at all,” Mattei told The New Republic in a statement.

“Let this be a reminder: This is not a moment to cower in silence, but to stand up to bullying, lawless misconduct,” Mattei said. “This isn’t over.”

Mattei had previously scorned Martin’s participation in Jones’s ongoing harassment campaign against Aldenberg as “corrupt complicity.”

Jones made his name and living by casting doubt on the reality of the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people. His supporters, fueled by Jones’s rhetoric, harassed and intimidated the family members of the shooting victims, including an instance in which they urinated on and desecrated 7-year-old Daniel Braden’s grave, according to court testimony.

Jones still has yet to pay the $1.3 billion he owes the victims’ families.