Last month, InfoWars host Alex Jones vowed he would not back down from the latest lawsuit brought against him by the yogurt company Chobani.
“I’m choosing this as a battle. On this I will stand. I will win, or I will die,” Jones said. “I’m not backing down. I’m never giving up. I love this.”
But on Wednesday, Jones relented and settled.
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“The case has been resolved,” a spokesman for Chobani told The Daily Beast. The spokesman would not comment on the amount of money involved in the settlement, but the lawsuit initially sought damages greater than $10,000. Most important, Chobani was seeking the retraction and removal of a video published on InfoWars in early April titled “Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists.”
InfoWars also claimed the company’s workers were responsible for a “500% increase in tuberculosis in Twin Falls.”
The lawsuit, filed in Twin Falls, Idaho, cites that the video purported to “describe Chobani’s practice of hiring refugees, and an assault unrelated to Chobani.”
It goes on to say the tweet from an InfoWars Twitter account, @PrisonPlanetTV, was retweeted 148 times as of April 21 and resulted in a number of users calling for a boycott of Chobani.
Jones had previously promised to come to Idaho with an investigative crew in order to “show the Islamists getting off of the planes.”
But on Wednesday, he relented and read a statement on his show acknowledging the inaccuracies of the previous stories.
“During the week of April 10, 2017, certain statements were made on the InfoWars Twitter feed and YouTube channel regarding Chobani, LLC that I now understand to be wrong,” Jones said. “The tweets and video have now been retracted and will not be reposted. On behalf of InfoWars, I regret that we mischaracterized Chobani, its employees, and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho, the way we did.”
This is the second time in the past two months that Jones has had to apologize for promoting falsehoods on his show. In March, he gave a personal apology to James Alefantis, the owner of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., restaurant that, according to the Pizzagate conspiracy, was the location of a child-sex ring with which Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were involved.
“I made comments about Mr. Alefantis that in hindsight I regret, and for which I apologize to him,” Jones said following an event in which a gunman opened fire in the restaurant after reading about the conspiracy online. “We relied on third-party accounts of alleged activities and conduct at the restaurant. We also relied on accounts of reporters who are no longer with us.”
Jones added: “To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong were involved in any human trafficking as was part of the theories about Pizzagate.”
Chobani also made the list of some 183 groups that Jones had said were controlled by liberal billionaire investor George Soros this year.
“I have been sued by the Islamic owner of the largest maker of yogurt in the world, Chobani,” said Jones, in a video initially titled “George Soros Backed Islamic Yogurt Maker Sues Alex Jones.”
That video and several others that levied accusations against Chobani remained visible on InfoWars’ social media pages even after Jones issued his statement on Wednesday. InfoWars did not respond to requests for comment.
“What’s incredible about this is this guy is from Turkey, he moved here in the mid-’90s. He’s buddies with Bill Clinton, George Soros. They worked together to bring refugees into the country. That’s mainstream news. A lot of the newspapers in Idaho and other places have been reporting that there have been reported rapes and people pleading guilty to it.”
Jones made Chobani his target as a result of a story in Twin Falls that garnered national news attention in which three boys were involved in an alleged assault of a 5-year-old girl—for which they ultimately pleaded guilty. The story was subsequently spread into an elaborate yarn claiming that a Syrian gang of adult men were involved.
“There was no gang rape, no knife attack, and we did not charge anybody with rape because no rape occurred,” Twin Falls County prosecutor Grant Loebs told The New York Times.
Last month, Jones also lost a custody battle in which a jury ruled that he would have joint custody of his children and his ex-wife would have the right to decide whom the children live with. The case made national headlines as Jones’ lawyers argued that the InfoWars host was “playing a character” on the show, although Jones repeatedly insisted during the trial that his political stances on the show are real.
