Everyone put on your surprised faces: Mother Jones reports that two former staffers at InfoWars have accused Alex Jones of sexual harassment and racial and religious discrimination. Originally reported in British tabloid The Daily Mail, the charges come almost a year after the racial and sexual harassment scandal that led to Fox News firing Bill O’Reilly. One ex-employee, Ashley Beckford, has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which she says that Jones “often spent his time shirtless, and endlessly leering, with or without a shirt, at female guests and employees while creating a disgusting, hostile environment.” He also allegedly singled out Beckford, who is African-American, for unwanted attention, including groping and comments on her race, and looked the other way as other employees mocked her skin tone, denied her promotions, and called her horrible racial slurs. Beckford, who was fired from InfoWars last year, says “It’s my opinion that it was [Jones’s] intention to see if he could groom me for sexual exploitation.”
Another ex-employee, Rob Jacobson, says that his religion was the subject of constant taunting from his former co-workers, who would call him names like “The Jewish Individual” and “The Resident Jew,” much to Jones’ delight. That particular bigoted in-joke came after the KKK’s David Duke appeared on InfoWars, at which time Jones introduced Jacobson to Duke as “my Jewish employee,” causing Duke to coin that utterly hilarious “Jewish Individual” sobriquet. (It’s funny because David Duke thinks the Holocaust didn’t happen, see.) Jacobson was also eventually fired, and is suing for unfair dismissal as well as harassment and discrimination.
Dr. David Jones, Alex Jones’ father and head of InfoWars HR—he’s also a dentist, not an MD or PhD, if you were wondering about the “Dr.” part—has responded with the old “locker room” defense, saying, “We’re a very yeasty environment and we give everybody crap. I’m just being brutally honest here.” As for Alex Jones himself, he says the charges have “no reflection of reality,” and are so patently untrue he devoted a whole half-hour video on his YouTube page to talking about them, as he does with all blatant falsehoods. We’ll see if the EEOC is as open to his “performance art” argument as the judge was in his custody trial.