title:  Criminal Complaint Shows Tie Between Alex Jones And ‘Pizzagate’ Shooter – Jones TERRIFIED
text: Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones isn t known for having a solid grasp of the truth. He takes ordinary news items and turns them into something completely bizarre, and he promotes things that have already been changed into something completely bizarre. Such was his involvement in perpetuating the lie that Comet Ping Pong, in D.C., was the site of a massive child trafficking operation involving Hillary Clinton.Now that that conspiracy theory has led to near-tragedy, Jones seems to be desperately trying to scrub any evidence he might have influenced Edgar Maddison Welch to fire his assault rifle in the restaurant in an insane attempt to investigate the place, and free the children allegedly being kept there. He thought he was doing a public service based in part on what Jones had been saying on the matter.Instead, he put innocent customers and restaurant staff in danger because he believed a conspiracy theory that Jones actively and openly promoted.The criminal complaint against Welch actually mentions a video carrying a headline from InfoWars called,  Watch PIZZAGATE: The Bigger Picture,  which Welch sent to a friend on Dec. 1. He had been watching YouTube videos in an attempt to research Pizzagate and he said it was  making him sick,  because why try and actually look for the truth when you d rather believe in conspiracy nonsense?Alex Jones  site, InfoWars, heavily promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Jones posted a video called  Pizzagate is Real: Something Is Going On, But What?  to his YouTube channel in late November, but now that video has been  removed by the user,  although nobody really knows when that happened.Jones has also deleted the video from his Facebook account, and InfoWars deleted an article that promoted Jones  Pizzagate video. Some things remain, but who knows for how long. It certainly seems like Jones wants to at least look innocent in the whole thing. When you peddle baseless conspiracy theories, though, this is what can happen. Jones needs to own up to his part in this near-tragedy.Featured image by Ben Jackson via Getty Images for SiriusXM