debunked. Epps is one of your guys. You're eating your own4th and Inches said:Harrison Bergeron said:
Has the committee uncovered why Ray Epps magically escaped prosecution
A Trump Backer's Downfall as the Target of a Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory
Ray Epps became the unwitting face of an attempt by pro-Trump forces to promote the baseless idea that the F.B.I. was behind the attack on the Capitol.
IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS Up a winding country road, in a trailer park a half-mile from a cattle ranch, lives a man whose life has been ruined by a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory.
Ray Epps has suffered enormously in the past 10 months as right-wing media figures and Republican politicians have baselessly described him as a covert government agent who helped to instigate the attack on the Capitol last year.
Strangers have assailed him as a coward and a traitor and have menacingly cautioned him to sleep with one eye open. He was forced to sell his business and his home in Arizona. Fearing for his safety and uncertain of his future, he and his wife moved into a mobile home in the foothills of the Rockies, with all of their belongings crammed into shipping containers in a high-desert meadow, a mile or two away.
"And for what lies?" Mr. Epps asked the other day with a look of pained exhaustion. "All of this, it's just been hell."
Almost from the moment that a violent mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, allies of former President Donald J. Trump have sought to shift the blame for the attack away from the people who were in the pro-Trump crowd that day to any number of scapegoats.
First they pointed at antifa, the leftist activists who have a history of clashing with Mr. Trump's backers but who did not show up when the Capitol was breached. Then they tried to fault the F.B.I., which, according to those who spread the baseless tale, planned the attack to provoke a crackdown on conservatives.
Mr. Epps, 61, was not just a bystander on Jan. 6. He traveled to Washington to back Mr. Trump, was taped urging people to go to the Capitol and was there himself on the day of the assault. But through a series of events that twisted his role, he became the face of this conspiracy theory about the F.B.I. as it spread from the fringes to the mainstream.
Obscure right-wing media outlets, like Revolver News, used selectively edited videos and unfounded leaps of logic to paint him as a secret federal asset in charge of a "breach team" responsible for setting off the riot at the Capitol.
The stories about Mr. Epps were quickly seized on by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who gave them a wider audience. They were also echoed by Republican members of Congress like Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Eventually, Mr. Trump joined the fray, mentioning Mr. Epps at one of his political rallies and lending fuel to a viral Twitter hashtag, #WhoIsRayEpps.
After months of watching from the shadows as public figures he once respected Mr. Trump among them tarred his name and destroyed his reputation, Mr. Epps decided that he wanted to answer that question for himself.
In a daylong interview, sitting in his air-conditioned recreational vehicle with his wife, Robyn, and their two Shih Tzus beside him, Mr. Epps described himself as a father, a former Marine and a staunch but disillusioned conservative whose leaders had betrayed him. He granted the interview on the condition that the location of his new home not be disclosed.
"I am at the center of this thing, and it's the biggest farce that's ever been," he said. "It's just not right. The American people are being led down a path. I think it should be criminal."
While Mr. Epps was a participant in some of the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, the claim that he inspired the Capitol riot in a "false flag" plot is solely based on the fact that he has never been arrested and therefore must be under the protection of the government.
But scores, if not hundreds, of people who appear to have committed minor crimes that day were investigated by the F.B.I. but have not been charged or taken into custody.
Mr. Epps said that he had acted stupidly at times when he and one of his sons took a last-minute trip to Washington for Mr. Trump's speech about election fraud. But he said that he had managed to avoid arrest because he reached out to the F.B.I. within minutes of discovering that agents wanted to speak with him.
On Jan. 8, 2021, just two days after the Capitol was attacked, Mr. Epps learned from a family member that the F.B.I. had issued a be-on-the-lookout alert in his name. He said he immediately called the bureau's National Threat Operations Center, and his phone records show that he spoke to agents there for nearly an hour.
The F.B.I. has repeatedly declined to comment on Mr. Epps, but his account of calling the operations center and of sitting down for a formal discussion with federal agents in March 2021 is backed by transcripts of those interviews reviewed by The New York Times.
The interview transcripts show that Mr. Epps told agents that he had spent much of his time at the Capitol seeking to calm down other rioters, an assertion supported by multiple video clips.
Mr. Epps, who questioned the results of the election, was also interviewed twice by the House select committee on Jan. 6. After his dealings with the panel were completed, officials released a statement saying he had told them that he never worked as an asset for, or an employee of, any federal law enforcement agency.
One of the moments Mr. Epps said he regrets most from his stay in Washington took place the night before the Capitol attack, when he joined his son and a friend for a pro-Trump rally at Black Lives Matter Plaza. During the event, he was videotaped by a right-wing provocateur encouraging people to go inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 in what he described, even at the time, as a form of peaceful protest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/us/politics/jan-6-conspiracy-theory-ray-epps.html
