The Ray Epps Fact Checks — Try Not To Laugh

Ray Epps has been a central figure in the misnamed January 6 insurrection. Trump supporters and like-minded individuals claim he is either an FBI agent or some sort of operative, a paid agent provocateur. This is what is known as a conspiracy theory. It has become a truism that the difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy is three months. It may take longer for the truth to come out, but in recent years we have seen so many so-called conspiracy theories about the perfidy of America’s Deep State come true that any unexplained activity warrants suspicion.

What is suspicious about Ray Epps is not so much his behaviour on January 6 and January 5 but the apparent total lack of interest in him by the FBI. The fact checking websites Snopes and Politifact play up the conspiracy angle. Snopes posts a nearly five minute long video which it claims exculpates Epps. This is the one in which members of the crowd chant “Fed! Fed! Fed!” Normally, only the end of this clip is shown, so does this undermine the claim that Epps was some sort of bad actor? No, there is plenty of other footage of him, and although clearly he wasn’t throwing bombs, there are literally hundreds of people who have been arrested for doing far less. 

Although Epps was initially on the FBI’s most wanted list, he has not to date been arrested. Even more suspicious are his questioning by the sham January 6 Committee and the sympathetic treatment afforded him by the mainstream media. Here is the transcript of his questioning by the Committee, all 97 pages of it very lightly redacted. The reader is invited to compare this anodyne, indeed pleasant conversation with the outrageous treatment meted out to IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, or John Durham, among others.

Whatever flim-flam the so-called fact checkers and the mainstream media give us, Ray Epps is clearly a character who warrants extreme suspicion. Could there though be another or supplementary explanation for the downplaying of his involvement? We know there were undercover agents at the protest, there always are, if only plainclothes police officers. We know too there were agents provocateurs. Could it be that the FBI has been using Ray Epps as a distraction from other far more sinister players…like the still unidentified individual who planted those pipe bombs on January 5? There are clear CCTV images of this masked up dude and a cool half million dollar reward, yet to date the authorities have drawn a blank.

We know too that there was credible intelligence there would be some violent disorder and that Nancy Pelosi among others did nothing to counteract it, thus enabling the media to smear all the protesters using the 1% rule.

Whatever the reason, the fact checkers are not to be trusted on Ray Epps or on anything else relating to US politics without strong corroboration.