Yahoo News Inside Jan. 6 Participant Ray Epps' Defamation Suit Against Fox News: 'They Searched for a Scapegoat to Blame'
The lawsuit highlights comments made by former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who spent two years pushing a conspiracy theory suggesting that Epps instigated the deadly Capitol riot on behalf of the FBI
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty
Ray Epps, in the red Trump hat, center, gestures to a line of law enforcement officers, as people gather on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, then-Arizona resident Ray Epps — a Donald Trump supporter who was at the front of the crowd that day — was singled out by conservative media and accused of instigating the violence on behalf of the FBI.
Now Epps is seeking damages from Fox News for promoting the "fantastical" conspiracy, alleging in a lawsuit filed July 12 that his livelihood was disrupted as a result of becoming a "scapegoat."
Epps admits that leading up to the deadly riot, he encouraged others to enter the Capitol in protest of what he believed was a rigged presidential election. He was also there at the barricades when they were toppled.
After Jan. 6, when the FBI posted photos of protesters seeking information, Epps was one of the people pictured. Shortly thereafter, his photo was taken down. Hundreds of people were arrested, but Epps wasn't, and when the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned FBI leadership about Epps, they declined to answer.
All of those details fueled a soon-to-be mainstream conspiracy theory that he was working with the FBI to take advantage of impressionable Trump supporters outside the Capitol that day. The conspiracy found itself amplified on Fox News' airwaves, including by ex-primetime host Tucker Carlson, and signaled Epps' action to take Fox to court on allegations of defamation and placing him before the public in a false light.
Epps and his wife sold their four-acre Arizona ranch, closed their formerly lucrative wedding venue business and, in May 2022, moved into a small trailer in Utah — all, they say, a result of feeling unsafe after they were made into enemies of the right.
“They are in hiding,” Epps’ attorney, Michael Teter, tells PEOPLE. “They received a number of credible and serious death threats, which become worse each time someone on Fox or Tucker Carlson talk about Ray.”
Epps fully denies involvement with the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, and claims he spent the day trying to de-escalate violence. The FBI would not comment on Epps for two years, as is standard protocol, but finally made a statement to 60 Minutes this spring saying that Epps has never been a source for them nor an employee.
Epps was a Trump voter, Fox News devotee and former president of the Arizona Oath Keepers — but says he left the group when he found them “too radical." He attended the protest with his son Jim, saying they were convinced that something was fishy about the election as a result of Fox News' reporting, and because he and his wife received three extra ballots in the mail. He wanted to speak up about this perceived fraud, but claims he had no intention of rioting.
On July 12, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee under oath, “This notion that somehow violence at the Capitol on January 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous.” He also testified he had no knowledge of Epps being a secret government agent.
Carlson and other Fox News personalities repeatedly posited on their highest-rated broadcasts that the FBI was behind the violence of Jan. 6 — and that Epps was working for them. Carlson made those claims for more than two years until his sudden departure from Fox in May.
“We know that [Epps] did not orchestrate [the attack on the U.S. Capitol], but that's not even largely what the big lie has been," Teter says. "The big lie has been that Ray was a federal agent who was helping to promote and to encourage people to go into the Capitol [because] he was working for the government. That, of course, is completely false.”
Months ago, Epps’ legal team requested that Carlson retract his statements and apologize on air, according to Teter, but he says there was no response.
Related: A Timeline of Tucker Carlson's Controversies
Epps claims Fox News used selective and edited clips of him with malicious intent, and that the Department of Justice told him two months ago it planned to seek criminal charges against him. If true, that may be an unwelcome consequence for Epps — he blames Fox News for harming his reputation — but it could also support his longstanding assertion that he's not a government agent. To date, no charges have been filed.
According to his sworn testimony, Epps called the FBI to identify and explain himself after seeing that he was on a list of Jan. 6 suspects, and he and his son were questioned by the FBI about their actions that day.
“The little snips and pieces, the edited film that [the media has] put together, this fictional character that they have put together, doesn't fit. If you-- if you see the whole story, you see that I'm trying to stop the violence, trying to keep people from getting themselves in more trouble,” Epps told the Jan. 6 House select committee in 2022 about why he thinks he hadn’t been charged.
Epps testified that when he saw the barricade on Jan. 6, he realized the crowd wasn’t going into the building. He positioned himself between the mob and the police, with his back to the police, and tried to get people to back off. He tried to convince a man who was shaking the barricade to stop, he said.
There is police footage of Epps thanking the police officers and telling the crowd to step back. “I thought I could stop it,” he testified. “I got called a lot of names that day."
It was in an atmosphere of unrelenting media attacks that Epps and his wife claim they began to receive death threats, that their 37 grandchildren got picked on at school, and that their business was ambushed by threatening voicemails, emails and text messages.
Media camped out outside their Arizona house, he testified, and people drove by and shot onto their property, the lawsuit claims. They allegedly found bullet casings in their yard, and T-shirts were sold online asking, “Who is Ray Epps?” and calling for his arrest, according to court filings. His personal information was also available on the "dark web," and the FBI contacted his attorney to ask about Epps’ security because they learned about threats to Epps, the lawsuit claims.
Carlson focused on Epps more than 20 times on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight, at least once with a graphic reading "FedEpps." “He’s obsessed with me,” Epps told 60 Minutes in April. “He’s going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives."
On Jan. 6, 2023, Carlson said, “two years after January 6th, long after an awful lot of other people have gone to jail for walking around the Capitol building, Ray Epps is still a free man. He’s never been charged, much less imprisoned in solitary confinement like so many others. Why is that? Well, let’s just stop lying. At this point, it’s pretty obvious why that is. But, of course, they’re still lying about it.”
The lawsuit claims Carlson relied on edited and distorted videos, and even after Carlson was given access to tens of thousands of security and surveillance videos, including video of Epps seemingly trying to de-escalate the situation at the Capitol, Carlson didn't change his narrative.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham also talked about Epps on her show and questioned why he was removed from the FBI list of suspects. The Quest Lords of the Apocalypse put out a song, “The Ballad of Ray Epps” that ends in the lyric, “by why the hell aren’t you in jail, the FBI won’t say."
A few of Epps’ actions in Washington, D.C. were enough to raise eyebrows. He was livestreamed the night of Jan. 5 talking to the crowd. “I’m going to put it out there. I’m probably going to go to jail for it, okay? Tomorrow, we need to go in to the Capitol. In to the Capitol. Peacefully.” The crowd immediately chanted, “Fed, fed, fed."
“My vision was get as many people in there as we can and surround it, be there, let them know that we're not happy with the-- with what-- what has happened, and that was it. No violence,” he testified to the Jan. 6 House committee. “I never intended to break the law. It's not in my DNA. It was something stupid that I said. I regret it. It's caused me and my family many problems."
Related: Donald Trump Sued by Fiancée of Brian Sicknick, Officer Who Died After Responding to Jan. 6 Riots
Carlson parted ways with Fox News shortly after the network settled a $1.6 billion lawsuit in which he was featured prominently. The suit, which was settled for $787.5 million, was brought by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting equipment company that was subject of conspiracies of widespread election fraud and other wrongdoing in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
PEOPLE reached out to Fox News for comment on the new lawsuit filed by Epps.
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