The cases of Ray Epps and Donald Trump collide in federal court

Falsely believing Donald Trump’s election lies broadcast on Fox News, Ray Epps travelled from Arizona to Washington DC, rallied alongside a mob, yelled for the crowd to march to the US Capitol, and then spent the next three years as the face of an ongoing conspiracy theory that, along with the criminal case against him, has ruined his life.

He was a federal plant, there to entrap Trump supporters, as part of a “deep state” plot working under then-President Trump’s administration to take him down, so that the mob could be arrested and charged as political prisoners under a Democratic regime, so the conspiracy goes.

Epps regrets going to DC altogether. Those baseless claims have consumed his life. Harassment and violent threats targeting him and his wife have “fragmented our families, taken our livelihood and negatively impacted our health, both physically and mentally,” he told a judge last week.

In the same building where Epps received a sentence of 12 months of probation for a charge connected to his actions on January 6, the man he voted for and whose lies inspired him to direct a mob to the seat of American democracy was telling judges that he should be immune from facing any criminal charges for his own attempts to subvert the election.

Epps joined Trump loyalists in Washington DC because he was among thousands of Americans who believed Mr Trump’s ongoing false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was marred with fraud. His wife told a judge that Fox News was the couple’s “exclusive news channel.”

They were sucked into a vortex of false statements and conspiracy theories spread by the former president. Then they became the subjects. Mr Trump shared those, too.

On Tuesday morning, their cases collided in a federal courthouse in Washington DC.

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Epps’s prosecution, testimony, public statements and sentencing have done little to curb the avalanche of evidence-free claims surrounding his family. On the three-year anniversary of the attack just three days earlier, the former president revived bogus claims that “antifa” and the FBI incited the mob. Immediately after Epps’s sentencing, Mr Trump’s allies fumed online with claims of a “fedsurrection”.

“We have suffered under the attacks of Fox News, politicians and social media and have learned how conspiracy theories can grow so quickly,” Robyn Epps wrote to the judge overseeing her husband’s case. “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.”

While Epps pleaded for leniency, the former president sat with his attorneys as they urged a three-judge federal appeals court panel to dismiss election conspiracy charges against him on “presidential immunity” grounds. The judge overseeing his criminal case has rejected the argument, and the appeals court panel did not appear convinced.

His false and inflated claims about the election are central to the case against him. They sowed enough doubt among his supporters to construct the lie of “stolen” and “rigged” elections that fuelled the mob while animating spurious and allegedly illegal attempts to overturn the results.

When those “lies were exposed,” Epps told the judge overseeing his case, “they created a conspiracy to shift the entire blame for the insurrection on the FBI and myself as I became the face of J6.”

“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,” he said.

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On 5 January, 2021, the former US Marine and a leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia in Arizona rallied alongside a group of Trump supporters and urged them to “go to the Capitol.” The crowd chanted “fed” at him in response.

The next day, he marched to the Capitol in camouflage and a red “TRUMP” hat. Video footage captures him calling out to the mob to march to the Capitol. He repeatedly tried to defuse what was growing into a volatile scene between rioters and law enforcement.

Within two days, his image appeared on an FBI watch list. He turned himself in, telling agents a story that has remained unchanged since: he attended what he thought was a protest, urged the crowd to demonstrate outside the Capitol, then tried to de-escalate mounting violence as the mob breached police barricades.

Prosecutors initially declined to prosecute him, citing insufficient evidence that he had entered the Capitol, engaged in violence or “committed any other criminal violations,” according to court documents.

But his “disappearance” from FBI lists and the initial lack of charges only fuelled the conspiracy theory that he was a covert federal agent. Those claims were elevated to Tucker Carlson’s highly watched Fox News programme, by members of Congress, and the former president.

Epps has separately sued Carlson for defamation.

Last year, Epps reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a charge of disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, which carries a maximum prison sentence of one year. Dozens of January 6 defendants have been similarly charged.

His attorney requested probation, but, in a damning sentencing memo to the judge, prosecutors pushed for six months in prison, alleging that he “engaged in felonious conduct” by encouraging the mob.

“Ray Epps has been unfairly scapegoated,” federal prosecutor Mike Gordon said during a sentencing hearing on 9 January. “His life has been destroyed by conspiracy theorists eager to blame the government for the violence on January 6.”

But US District Judge James Boasberg said his actions merit “serious” consequences, and would have warranted jail time if not for the circumstances of his bizarre three-year journey through a far-right conspiratorial universe.

He said Epps was the only January 6 defendant to face life-changing harassment and violent threats “for what you didn’t do.”