A man whose life was upended by right-wing conspiracy theories accusing him of being a federal agent assigned to entrap Donald Trump’s supporters has been sentenced to one year of probation for crimes connected to the January 6 attack.
Ray Epps received a sentence of 12 months of probation on 9 January after pleading guilty to a charge of disorderly or disruptive conduct for joining a mob in Washington DC and encouraging rioters to march to the US Capitol, where the former president’s loyalists stormed the halls of Congress to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election.
He was sentenced in the same building where Mr Trump was attending his own hearing to defend his claim to “immunity” from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the election, culminating in the mob fuelled by his election lies that he failed to stop.
Epps and his wife have spent the three years that followed dodging an ongoing conspiracy theory amplified by Fox News, members of Congress and Mr Trump himself alleging that he worked with federal law enforcement to provoke rioters.
Prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly rejected those claims, and Epps is suing Fox News and Tucker Carlson for defamation.
In a letter asking a judge for leniency before Tuesday’s hearing, Epps – who supported the former president in 2016 and 2020 and was a loyal Fox viewer at the time – wrote that he has since learned “not to put my trust in politicians, Fox News and some other media and social media outlets, only to have them betray me and other American citizens with election lies.”
“When the lies were exposed, they created a conspiracy to shift the entire blame for the insurrection on the FBI and myself as I became the face of J6,” he wrote. “The blame for the insurrection is not on the FBI. It is on those who were at the Capitol and engaged in insurrectionist activities and those who misled Americans like myself into believing the election had been stolen.”
A mob loyal to Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021.— (AP)
Federal prosecutors initially requested a prison sentence of six months.
The Epps family and his attorneys sought a probationary sentence, pushing back against claims from prosecutors that he “engaged in felonious conduct” and pointing to the “overwhelming” impacts from conspiracy theories and far-right threats to his family.
“He was running a family property that contained a special-events venue and other businesses before selling it all and going into hiding because of threats against him and his wife as a result of dangerous misinformation,” his attorney Ed Ungvarsky wrote on 7 January. “They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community.”
In a separate letter to the judge, his wife Robyn Epps wrote that Fox News was the couple’s “exclusive news channel.”
Epps, a former US Marine and ex-Oath Keepers leader in Arizona, traveled to Washington DC on the false belief that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.
He is captured in video footage urging a mob to march to the Capitol after Mr Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, where he told his supporters to head towards the Capitol and “fight like hell”.
But after Fox and others spread what she called the “Ray Epps conspiracy theory,” the couple “endured death threats and harassment that put our lives at risk,” she wrote.
Their phones were bombarded with threatening messages and “frightening” voicemails. People drove by their homes waving guns. Bullet casings were found on their property. Couples posed as potential customers for their wedding business only to corner them with questions about Epps. The threats, intruders and fear became so overwhelming they eventually sold their home and business to go into hiding, Ms Epps wrote.
“We have suffered under the attacks of Fox News, politicians and social media and have learned how conspiracy theories can grow so quickly,” she wrote. “They did so because the media and people who are trusted lie, distort the truth and outright make up information for their own benefit or edification.”
Another letter from Epps family members said he was “thrown under the bus by Fox, Trump and so many other news media for doing what he thought he should to support them.”
“For a time afterward, as someone who believed in peaceful protest and saw non-peaceful agitation, he questioned how so many Trump supporters could be so wrong and thought there might also be left-wing persons amidst the crowd stirring the pot,” according to his attorney.
“Mr Epps concluded long ago that any such thoughts were wrong,” Mr Ungvarsky wrote. “He educated himself.”
Despite testimony from Epps and dozens of others charges in connection with January 6, the former president himself and his allies in Congress and in media continue to falsely assert that “antifa” or government actors played a role in the attack.
“By the way, there was antifa, there was FBI, there were a lot of other people there, too, leading the charge,” Mr Trump said at a rally in Iowa on 5 January. “You saw the same people that I did.”
After Epps’s sentencing, his son Donald Trump Jr amplified the so-called “fedsurrection” narrative. “He totally wasn’t put there to incite things by the feds. Our country is screwed… the traitors in charge aren’t even pretending anymore,” he wrote.
“Nothing to see here!” wrote US Rep Thomas Massie, who berated US Attorney General Merrick Garland during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last year while alleging Epps was an FBI informant.
“This proves OVERWHELMINGLY J6 is a political witch hunt against MAGA and it’s so obvious that Biden’s DOJ will actually help us in 2024,” wrote US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She claimed that US Attorney Matthew Graves is creating “more political prisoners out of innocent people”.
Nearly one-third of members of Congresss have denied the election’s outcome, promoted bogus conspiracy theories about voter fraud, or supported spurious failed legal battles to overturn the results, according to one recent analysis.
That includes 127 sitting members of Congress who refused to certify 2020 results.
