For more than two years, the same soulless ghouls who openly jeered at the fatal shooting of unarmed veteran Ashli Babbitt with taunts of ‘FAFO’ and ‘domestic terrorist’ get the vapors at the mere mention of another name.
The other name is in the process of launching a defamation suit against Fox News.
Michael Teter, a lawyer representing Epps, sent Fox News network a cease-and-desist letter, demanding an on-air apology and a retraction of the conspiracy theory, the Times reported.
Teter told the Times that Fox did not respond to their suit, and a lawsuit is being prepared against the network.
Experts have said that Epps’ potential case against Fox News could have standing and become a real issue for the conservative news network. — The Guardian
The allegation is that this is an obviously false conspiracy theory. That Fox News is peddling in lies. And that Ray Epps and his family have been in danger since this has become a topic of conversation.
Of course, that’s an allegation on the part of Epps’s lawyer. It’s a claim that is only as strong as the facts that support it.
What makes this case far more difficult is the fact that our own government has had a nasty habit of lying to the public about topics they don’t want us talking about, and censoring ideas they don’t want shared.
We’re expected to take for granted that the undisputed facts that we now know are enough to put this question to rest. But from here in the cheap seats, that conclusion is not such a self-evidently obvious one to draw.
There are several problems standing in the way of unquestioningly accepting that premise.
Problem #1
Contrast the different treatment of Ray Epps and Ashlii Babbitt.
Ashlii Babbitt was unarmed. As such, she never posed a direct physical threat to anyone. Footage from earlier in the day even shows her encouraging others in the crowd to remain non-violent. The cop who shot her faced ZERO negative consequences. On the contrary, Officer Michael Byrd literally received a medal for it. The Congressional Gold Medal.
Wow. That’s kind of ‘off-brand’ for the All Cops Are B****rds & F*** the Police crowd, isn’t it? Especially for a White House that had helped raise bail money for BLM rioters clashing with police and burning federal buildings just a few months earlier.
The government has been hellbent-for-leather in an effort to destroy the lives of ‘parading’ grandmothers who came out to support Trump and walked in through an apparently open door.
CCTV film has been carefully curated to release only the most damning moments of the footage — as Tucker’s release of J6 footage demonstrated. There’s a term for that: deceptive editing.
For example: Josh Hawley was never ‘running’ in fear his life, as the hopelessly partisan J6 Committee slanderously accused him of doing. No. He was trying to keep up with other Senators who had left ahead of him.
The so-called ‘Q-ANON Shaman’ in the buffalo horns also suffered from deceptive editing. The public never saw video showing he had been escorted through the building by police. Ditto the video where he is reading Trump’s tweets over his bullhorn and telling the crowd to peacefully disperse.
Gee, that sounds like the exact opposite of ‘riot incitement’. But, despite any evidence of him actually committing an act of violence or encouraging violence in others the DOJ threw the book at him anyway.
Is it any wonder the public is left scratching our heads and looking for answers with the curious case of Ray Epps? Because that is difficult to square with what is publicly known about the comings and goings of Ray Epps on J6.
To start with, no less an authority than Washington Field Office’s own pinned tweet, shows the face of Ray Epps among the list of those ‘who committed violence’ at the US Capitol on January 6th. How can Fox News possibly be defaming him if the FBI’s own ‘pinned tweet’ calls Ray Epps someone who committed violence.
As of this very moment, a photo of Ray Epps is still prominently featured on the FBI/Washington Field Office's pinned tweet as a person "who committed violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6." https://t.co/sFUE5JK6vU pic.twitter.com/kwb8u9H1PE
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 10, 2023
The public are left to wonder why someone who had ‘committed violence’ (in the FBI’s own words) is walking around as a free man when we can all name people who never did anything wrong on that day, including setting foot in the Capitol Building, but now have criminal records.
It wasn’t long before Ray’s face and image were scrubbed from the FBI’s website. That would be totally understandable if the man had played no role at all in the events of January 6th. But for that, we have other evidence to the contrary… beyond that pinned tweet itself.
For an agency that had been openly talking about Trump’s ‘peacefully and patriotically’ speech as ‘inciting an insurrection’, there were some really big reasons to question why the FBI would quietly delete his name and picture.
Feds and Democrats (sorry for the redundancy) endlessly lament the ‘incitement’ of the riot, laying blame at Trump’s feet because of it, but they seem entirely unphased by this video taken just one night before the Capitol Riot:
“Tomorrow, we need to go INTO the Capitol, INTO the Capitol.” — Ray Epps
I give you Ray Epps, the only Jan 6 participant the NYT, 60 Minutes, Adam Kinzinger, and the DOJ will defend! pic.twitter.com/fPaGan9oys
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 10, 2023
The crowd drowned him out. ‘NO!’… Fed.
By standards applied to other J6ers, the DOJ could have easily slapped a conspiracy charge against Epps for the following exchange
Note the person Epps is speaking to hear ended up going into the Capital and doing a lot of damag pic.twitter.com/UiVKtMXIUJ
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 10, 2023
Here he is driving the crowds in the direction of the Capitol after Trump’s speech.
🚨 Since MSM ignores videos of Ray Epps rounding people up to go in the Capitol on J6, I guess we better show it AGAIN, AGAIN, & AGAIN, until the WHOLE world sees the truth. We’re the news now! NEVER been arrested.. so who paid Ray Epps?!🤨
Sound Up 🔊🔥
pic.twitter.com/YLICskgnco— 🔥🇺🇸 KC 🇺🇸🔥 (@KCPayTreeIt) July 10, 2023
Plus there is this complicating factor…
Ray Epps literally texted his nephew "I helped to orchestrate it"
Perhaps he should sue himself for defamation…
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 10, 2023
For all of that, Ray walks the planet a free man when people whose sins are far less obvious or egregious have been held for years without bail or a trial.
This is the critical footage that really required an explanation.
When Ray Epps whispered in the man's ear, it didn't take long for him to "breach" the barricade… wonder what Ray said?🤔🤔 "Nice weather we're having?" "What time is it?" "Let's go home?" pic.twitter.com/C6nD1ai5vX
— Jim Benson (MAGA World Leader) (@jmbenson1491) September 24, 2022
The NYTimes gives the bald assertion that there’s nothing to see here and that it’s a conspiracy theory. Well, that’s what discovery is for, isn’t it? Because it’s only defamation if it’s false.
There’s another wrinkle to his story. The Feds themselves had a chance to say — under oath — that there was no connection between Ray Epps and any federal agency, or at least Ray Epps and law enforcement.
When given opportunity to address this question directly and declare that Ray Epps was not working in coordination with the government that day, they gave weasel-word answers couched in lawyer-speak.
By then they knew he was suspected of coordinating with the feds and federal informants.
It has become abundantly clear that the Capitol was positively crawling with people who had been working on the inside of various groups who showed up that day. If Ray Epps was not working as a fed or an informant for that event, officials in sworn hearings could have conclusively stated that nobody in the FBI or DOJ was working in cooperation with him, at least in that context.
But they didn’t give us a straight answer, did they?
And with so many other instances where the motives of the federal government were less than pure, questions this compelling will need a compelling answer.
Could there be a simple explanation for what happened here? For why Ray got the kid glove treatment from the Feds when everyone else got a steel-toed boot on their metaphorical necks?
Maybe. But we’re not getting ‘simple explanations’. What we are hearing sounds a lot like the media lies and spin that made up the news cycle through the entire Trump presidency … and most official government messaging ever since.
The left can call it ‘conspiracy theory’ all they want, but honestly, it was the Feds’ habit of dissembling for political gain and preferential political treatment of allies at the expense of foes that has fueled our side’s scepticism in the first place.
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Sources Cited:
Guardian
