The Story Behind the "Ray Epps" Conspiracy Theory Now Burning Through Congress and Far-Right Social Media

There's a very clear reason that insurrectionists are falsely scapegoating Ray Epps as part of their QAnonist delusion that the FBI masterminded the worst domestic terror attack since the Civil War.

Above (l): Ray Epps. Above (r): Ray Epps (r) with Tim Gionet (l) on January 5.

Introduction

It’s little secret that the far right of American politics—for all its obsession with “law-and-order”—is, as a class, more poorly informed about criminal law, criminal justice, criminal investigations, and criminal prosecutions than any similarly preoccupied subset of U.S. citizens. The Trumpist fringe of American political discourse routinely uses “crime and punishment” rhetoric (as well as “personal responsibility” rhetoric) as a distraction from the fact that they appear to take none of these three things seriously unless and until it’s politically profitable to them to do so.

Of late, the far-right’s neophytic criminal justice discourse has hinged on the idea that if pro-Trump insurrectionists can find just one person who was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and was, at the time, either a member of antifa or an agent of the FBI, it will automatically and immediately prove that all other evidence related to the attack on the Capitol that day is moot and can safely be erased from our collective memory. Indeed, the insurrectionists have made themselves so immune (even allergic) to logic, common sense, and rational argument that they’re forever searching for what we used to call—back when I was a trial attorney for the New Hampshire Public Defender who often dealt with cases that looked like sure losers—the one “good fact” I could hang my hat on as the case went down to defeat (in a process we used to call “the long goodbye”).

The insurrectionists first claimed that John Earle Sullivan, whose video of the death of Ashli Babbitt went viral in January 2021, was a secret member of antifa, and that his presence in the Capitol on January 6 therefore “proved” that the more than 1,000 Trump supporters who entered the Capitol that day—hundreds of whom have since, in federal court, made explicit that they are (or were) ardent pro-Trump supporters—were in fact undercover lefties. It turned out that not only was Sullivan not a member of antifa, not only had antifa specifically banned him from its events because it feared he was a far-right provocateur, but he is in fact connected to the Proud Boys through his brother James Sullivan. Indeed, John and James were filming a documentary about themselves on January 6, 2021, and the notion that they’re politically at odds with one another in a conventional left-right sense—rather than, as appears to be the case, one of them being an apolitical anarchist (John) and one a doctrinaire alt-rightist looking to burnish his credentials within the MAGA “movement” (James)—made for good film.

Proof also revealed that Team Trump’s plan to blame January 6 on antifa predated the attack on the Capitol—seemingly confirming that Trump’s circle knew the Capitol would be stormed on January 6 (and not just because the U.S. Secret Service had told Donald Trump several days earlier that the Capitol would be unsafe on that day).

Having failed to pin the entirety of January 6 on one man linked to the Proud Boys, the insurrectionists—now, in January 2022, bolstered by insurrectionist leader Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who raised the issue at a hearing yesterday—are searching for a new scapegoat, and they’ve lit upon a pro-Trump veteran from Arizona, Ray Epps. The insurrectionists claim that on January 6 Epps was an FBI agent, and that he was after that day put on a “wanted” list by the FBI over his actions on January 6—then taken off the list because he actually works for the Bureau. Why in the world the FBI would put an undercover agent’s face and name on a nationally distributed document, only to retract it because such a photo would obviously blow his cover in a way that endangered him and his family, is never contemplated, let alone explained, by the insurrectionists.

Among the many problems with this new conspiracy theory—besides the fact that Epps was investigated but then not arrested by the FBI because he never entered the Capitol on January 6 and therefore didn’t commit a crime, and has since confirmed in an interview with the House January 6 Committee that he doesn’t now and hasn’t ever worked for or with the FBI—is that we actually know why Epps was chosen by the far right to be its would-be scapegoat. And the answer tracks back to an exclusive Proof report that was published seven months ago.

Above: Trump supporters launch a coordinated attack on D.C. Metropolitan Police officers guarding Black Lives Matter Plaza on January 5, 2021.

The Truth About Ray Epps

On June 21, 2021, Proof began a series of reports about a January 5 livestream from Washington by domestic terrorist Tim Gionet (a.k.a. “Baked Alaska”):

These Proof reports continued through early August of 2021 (see, e.g., here). In the livestream Gionet was seen—over and over—attempting to stoke violence against police: first outside the Willard Hotel (where he participated in an event that culminated in an arson on the sidewalk outside the hotel) and then at Black Lives Matter Plaza, where, as Proof detailed, there was a pro-Trump riot on January 5 that presaged the attack on the U.S. Capitol the following day.

{Note: The January 5 BLM Plaza Riot remains unreported on by major media for reasons that pass understanding. The event was large, scary, violent, and involved hundreds and hundreds of civilians and police—and was caught on video in its entirety on the eve of the insurrection.}

Immediately after first reports at Proof about his livestream, Gionet—who had been arrested for his role in the insurrection in mid-January 2021 but released on bail—either deleted the livestream himself or saw it deleted by YouTube (which is unclear).

{Note: The Kremlin-funded Russia Today (RT) now has published a partial, third-party clip of the Gionet-Epps conversation on January 5, clearly in an attempt to support the conspiracy theory now being pushed by the insurrectionists. In it, Epps tells Gionet, “We need to go in…to the Capitol [on January 6]”, and Gionet—who, seeming to know in advance what Epps was going to say, had at first warned him, “Let’s not say it [aloud]…”, happily responds, “Let’s go!”}

By November, Gionet had been convicted of assault, disorderly conduct, and criminal trespass in a separate case in Scottsdale, Arizona. As that case, coupled with his Insurrection Eve video, confirmed, Mr. Gionet’s modus operandi, in both Arizona and Washington, has been to gleefully, even impishly insert himself in tense situations in which he at first seems to be charismatically and good-naturedly participating in an exciting event, only to quickly reveal that he seeks to provoke a violent confrontation with law enforcement and/or security guards.

When Proof reported on Gionet’s Insurrection Eve movements in Summer 2021—leaving to the excellent Sedition Hunters group the tracking of his entrance into the Capitol on January 6—it revealed, in the culmination of a report in August, the following:

In one clip of Gionet from the riot at Black Lives Matter Plaza, an older Trump supporter says to Gionet, following a heated exchange between fellow Trump supporters, “We’re not here [in DC] to fight [one another]—we’re here to storm the Capitol!” Gionet immediately expresses his agreement with the sentiment.

Proof indicated that the statement made by the “older Trump supporter”—a statement made brazenly and publicly, without any sense that Gionet would find it controversial (which he didn’t)—was a significant sign that it was widely known among the Trumpists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 that that’s what they were in Washington to do.

Since the Proof report, other evidence on this score has emerged—such as supporters of Trump responding in real time to his fiery speech at the White House Ellipse with shouted expressions of their present intent to storm the Capitol.

As Proof wrote in a report on Tim Gionet nearly six months ago (emphasis supplied):

Certainty about the purpose of the Stop the Steal events on January 5 and January 6 was also seen in the face of InfoWars’ Owen Shroyer as he marched with his boss—Alex Jones, a Stop the Steal co-organizer—and Stop the Steal’s Ali Alexander on Insurrection Day. As seen at the link above, when Shroyer learns that the Capitol has been breached on January 6, his response to Jones falsely claiming that “provocateurs” had done so is to roll his eyes and shake his head. He knew that the confluence of figures in and around the Willard Hotel and Freedom Plaza had been more than enough to launch an attack on the Capitol that all concerned knew was coming.

Though Proof did not have the name of the aforementioned “older Trump supporter” at the time it wrote its report on Gionet, the name of this particular radical Trumpist insurrectionist is now known.

His name is Ray Epps.

It is for this reason that the far-right—of which Gionet is a prominent member, and even a leader—has turned on Epps: because Epps is the only known/named Trump supporter to on camera admit, prior to January 6, that those who heeded Trump’s call to come to Washington knew full well that they were doing so in order to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, contrary to powerful Republicans’ claims that their rank-and-file (as opposed to organized paramilitaries like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters) acted “spontaneously” on Insurrection Day.

{Note: Proof is about to present much, much more evidence on this score—indeed, far more explicit evidence—in its soon-to-drop article, “The Coming Collapse of Donald Trump’s January 6 Conspiracy, Part 4: Ali Alexander.”}

By falsely accusing Epps of being an FBI agent, the insurrectionists aim to both (a) neutralize him as a present and future congressional witness, and (b) turn the most stark piece of testimony about January 6 not being spontaneous against their accusers.

The intent behind the sad “Ray Epps” conspiracy theory couldn’t possibly be more transparent, which may be one reason the Washington Post has now declared it dead.

Addendum

{published on July 12, 2023}

In a subsequent follow-up to this report, Proof wrote of how a video of Epps on Capitol grounds on January 6, discovered in 2022, showed him trying to defuse tensions outside the Capitol on that day.

So not only did Epps never enter the Capitol, but he’s on video trying to stop the January 6 attack—and indeed, even beyond this, major media has now reported that at least two January 6 defendants told law enforcement that Epps was trying to stop the storming of the Capitol on that day.

(Apparently, he had had a change of heart from the night before—perhaps because he witnessed the January 5 Black Lives Matter Plaza Riot firsthand. That riot, as already noted above, is another event that the true story of Ray Epps in D.C. in January 2021 encompasses that MAGA adherents would certainly not like to see properly reported in major media.)

The above facts—plus, again, the fact that Epps never went inside the Capitol, and DOJ chose only to charge those who did and/or who were paramilitary leaders of the Trumpist irregulars in D.C. on the day in question—is why Epps was taken off the FBI’s target list and never arrested.

(While Epps’ attorney included in a July 12, 2023 legal filing that the FBI had recently informed his client it was planning to prosecute him more than two and a half years after the events of January 6, we still do not know if this will actually happen—and if it does, in the view of Proof it would be a sad example of the FBI taking action to protect its own reputation rather than upholding the rule of law. A prosecution of Epps would be entirely inconsistent with and indeed contrary to the explicit prosecutorial strategy DOJ has announced with respect to January 6. There are other ways for the FBI to confirm Epps has never worked for the Bureau, if it still feels the need to do so, besides prosecuting him for conduct less egregious than thousands and thousands of Trump supporters who were on Capitol grounds on January 6 who it has not even contemplated prosecuting.)

Any MAGA supporter acting in good faith could’ve easily have discovered this information, as could any on-air far-right propagandist like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson (since fired by the network), who repeatedly ran segments post-January 6 on the GOP’s leading televisual propaganda organ suggesting that Epps was an FBI agent on Insurrection Day.

It is for this reason that on July 12, 2023, Ray Epps decided to sue Fox News for Defamation. The general consensus among legal experts—including the author of Proof—is that Epps has a very strong case.

(For his part, Tim Gionet ultimately pleaded guilty to a January 6-related federal criminal offense. Gionet received a sentence of two months in federal prison and a sizeable restitution order because, unlike Epps, he did go inside the Capitol on January 6 and even livestreamed gleefully from within the building—something his coy, performatively arch conversation with Epps from the night before suggests he was always planning on doing, and may have even known was the general plan of his fellow Proud Boys from the beginning. The truth of this last point remains elusive to this day, however.)

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