Podcaster Joe Rogan has faced criticism after he once again pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the January 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation.
The same claim has led Fox News to face a second defamation lawsuit in connection to their coverage of the 2020 election. In a settlement, the network paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5m for airing false claims about the company.
Mr Rogan has told his listeners on several occasions that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies influenced the Capitol riot using “agent provocateurs”, including Ray Epps, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, who Mr Rogan said “clearly instigated” the insurrection, according to The Daily Beast.
“The January 6 thing is bad, but also, the intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol building, that’s a fact,” Mr Rogan said during his 28 July episode with fellow comedian Jim Gaffigan.
But the podcaster added that he wasn’t sure that Mr Epps was working with the FBI, claiming that he was only posing questions and noting that others appeared to think that Mr Epps was an undercover agent. But Mr Rogan made some of the same claims that Mr Epps included in his lawsuit against Fox and its now-ousted host Tucker Carlson.
“I think that every other person who was involved in January 6, who was involved in coordinating a break-in into the Capitol and then instigating people, they were all arrested,” Mr Rogan said. “This guy wasn’t. Not only that, but they were defending him in The New York Times, The Washington Post, all these different things saying Fox News has unjustly accused him of instigating when he clearly instigated, he did it on camera. I don’t know if he was a Fed. I know a lot of people think he was a Fed.”
Mr Rogan argued that the intelligence community wanted to frame Mr Trump because of his opposition to the “deep state” and that they created the right circumstances for the violence to occur to make Mr Trump appear responsible for the crimes committed by his supporters.
“Trump was very open about his disdain for the intelligence agencies. Throughout history, people of unchecked power and unchecked influence have enemies and Trump was their enemy,” Mr Rogan said.
He added that the intelligence community was “going to get him any way that they could”.
Mr Epps has sued Fox and Mr Carlson for defamation for claiming that he was an “agent provocateur”. It led to him facing death threats and he and his wife had to leave their home and move to a remote area.
“Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” Mr Epps’ legal filing states. “It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.”
Mr Rogan has previously said that the intelligence community had a “vested interest in this going sideways”.
“If somebody wanted to disparage a political party or to maybe have some sort of a justification for getting some influential person like Donald Trump offline, that would be the way they would do it,” he has said.
In his legal filing, Mr Epps says he was a frequent viewer of Fox News and that their false claims that voting machines had been rigged was part of the reason he travelled to DC in January 2021.
The filing also states that following right-wingers accusing him of being a federal agent, the Department of Justice told him in May of this year that he was facing charges in connection to the insurrection.
The lawsuit states that this goes against the notion that he’s protected from prosecution.
Mr Epps’ attorney Michael Teter told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that “Joe Rogan’s recent comments show the staying power and consequences of Fox’s and Tucker Carlson’s lies about Ray Epps.
“For years, Fox targeted Ray and spread falsehoods about him and Fox’s viewers used the lies as a basis to harass and threaten Ray.
“The absurdity of the conspiracy theory does not stand in the way of it being spread and weaponized to harm Ray.
“If Mr Rogan is truly interested in focusing on who instigated the attack on the Capitol, he would find more truth in looking at the mirror than he does in focusing on a wedding venue owner from Arizona.”
The FBI has said that “Ray Epps has never been an FBI source or an FBI employee”.
The House Select Committee that investigated the riot has said there’s no evidence to support the claim that Mr Epps planned or instigated the riots.
Philip Bump of The Washington Post tweeted that Mr Rogan’s comments were “just plain old-fashioned dumb”.
Former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens added: “I’ve done a lot of reporting on steroids and multiple studies have proven steroid abuse is dangerous but does not turn you into a barking dog conspiracy nut. So Joe Rogan can’t blame his condition on the juice.”
“Now Joe Rogan, who currently runs one of the largest media platforms out there, is saying January 6th was a false flag. …please stop asking me why I think Rogan is a raging moron,” Ryan Shead wrote.
