Radio host Alex Jones and his website, InfoWars, have been included as defendants in a defamation lawsuit. Plaintiff and Charlottesville, Virginia, protester Brennan Gilmore is being represented by Georgetown Law's Civil Rights Clinic, who filed the suit on Tuesday.
After posting video footage he took of the vehicle attack responsible for fellow protester Heather Heyer's murder, Gilmore claims Jones and other defendants referred him as a "shill" for the "deep state" in an effort to encourage listeners to harass him.
"Today, I'm asking a court to hold them responsible for the personal and professional damage their lies have caused me, and, more importantly, to deter them from repeating this dangerous pattern of defamation and intimidation," Gilmore said in a statement.
The lawsuit claims that the attacks from Jones and others — including former Congressman Allen West and former Breitbart journalist Lee Stranahan — led to Gilmore's family's address being shared online, and repeated harassment and death threats.
At the time of the protest, Gilmore was on leave from the State Department's foreign service. The Huffington Post reported that Jones used Gilmore's occupation to claim that the "'CIA' and other operatives (were) behind the violence at Charlottesville."
During a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Gilmore said, "What we see now is a pattern of attacks that politically motivated outlets like Infowars and The Gateway Pundit launch against witnesses and other victims of tragedies. They twisted [my] service into a story that I was a deep-state operative who had a role in organizing the violence that we saw in Charlottesville to undermine the Trump administration."
Gilmore's lawsuit states: "To this day, Brennan suffers the effects of this character assassination: his career as a diplomat has been compromised, he has lost potential partners and clients in his most recent business venture, and his social relationships have been irreversibly damaged."
Alex Jones acknowledged the lawsuit via Twitter, with a post declaring "Lawsuit Filed Against #Infowars For Questioning Leftist PR Surround Charlottesville."
Jones also posted a video about Gilmore's allegations, in which he says to his audience, "As all of you know, everybody from the Communist Party USA to five different individuals that have worked directly for Hillary Clinton have filed completely baseless and frivolous lawsuits against InfoWars."
Breck Dumas
