Our reporter spent three hours with Alex Jones. Here’s what that was like.

I met Mr. Jones in family court in Austin, Tex., in 2018 after a custody hearing with his ex-wife, Kelly Jones.

YouTube had a few days before removed four of Mr. Jones’s videos from its platform for violating its child endangerment and hate speech standards. (Mr. Jones has since had his content eliminated by most major social media companies.)

In the hallway outside the courtroom, Mr. Jones told me he blamed the mainstream news media for bringing him within “minutes of losing my kids.” He then did what few actually believed he would: He agreed to an interview with The New York Times.

When we met for the interview, Mr. Jones was holding a printout of a story I had written. The article included his demand, in court documents, for more than $100,000 in court costs from the parents of Noah Pozner, who died at Sandy Hook.

He jabbed his finger at me. “You have a responsibility. You wrote the blueprint article everybody else picked up where they said, ‘Alex Jones is the scum of the earth … People need to go after Alex Jones, people need to bankrupt Alex Jones, people need to kill Alex Jones,’” he said, “‘because he sends people to these parents’ houses and he won’t stop doing it.’”