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Ray Epps Sues Fox [1]
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Date: 2023-07-12
Tucker Carlson repeatedly accused mild mannered wedding events planner Ray Epps of being the “fed plant” that sparked the January 6th insurrection. The false claims ruined Epps’s life and business. Today, in the fashion of Dominion Voting Machines, Epps struck back and sued Fox News for defamation. You can read the lawsuit HERE.
The lawsuit repeatedly references Fox’s lies about Dominion as reflecting Fox’s willingness to lie about the election and the events of January 6th. Fox has good cause for concern. The attorney bringing the lawsuit is Brian Farnan, one of the lead attorney that secured a nearly $1 billion settlement for Dominion in its defamation lawsuit against Fox.
As Epps makes clear in his lawsuit, he was a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, voting for him both times. He was also a fan of Fox News, and Tucker Carlson in particular. Epps states that it was reporting by Tucker, and Fox, boosting claims of election fraud, that prompted him to travel to D.C. for the January 6 rally.
Epps explains his now famous night of January 5th statement urging people to march into the Capitol as actually suggesting they go peacefully to the Rotunda. Epps claims he believed the Rotunda would be open to the public, as it was when he previously visited the Capitol a decade earlier. When Epps suggested this, the now convicted protester known as “Baked Alaska,” started chanting “fed, fed, fed.”
On January 6th Epps repeatedly attempted to deescalate matters, and claims there is video that shows he did (more on that later). He urged protesters to not assault police, that they were just doing their job. When he saw it turn violent he left. He never went into the Capitol.
He returned home to Arizona and was surprised when his picture appeared on an FBI website of suspects. He called the FBI, submitted to voluntary interviews, and the picture was removed. In the words of the lawsuit:
That should have been the end of the matter for Epps. No one in the public had heard his name. No one in the public knew anything about him. That changed, though, when Fox—and specifically Mr. Carlson—decided that Epps was the villain they needed to distract from the Dominion lawsuit and their culpability for stoking the fire that led to the events of January 6th. Mr. Carlson took up Baked Alaska’s cry and began promoting the idea that the FBI was responsible for January 6th in his series Patriot Purge, which Fox released on its streaming service. Since then, Mr. Carlson has become fixated on Epps.
Much of the lawsuit details Carlson’s false claims against him, and those of other Fox personalities. It also details Epps’s damages. Having to sell his home, losing his successful business completely, the death threats against him and his family.
The lawsuit also details Carlson’s and Fox’s duplicity and dishonesty in concealing from the American public any information contradicting the narrative that Epps’s was a federal agent. This included Fox being told an attorney for the Proud Boys, that they did not act based on any prompting by federal agents. Fox immediately killed that information because it didn’t fit Tucker’s narrative.
The lawsuit notes that Tucker received thousands of hours of video, given to no other journalist, from Speaker McCarthy. Per the lawsuit:
Among the footage available to Mr. Carlson was body cam video that fully and conclusively supported Epps’s statements that he was acting to deescalate the crowd and contradicted the fantastical conspiracy theory promoted by Mr.Carlson. Mr. Carlson, however, did not present his viewers with these videos that directly contradicted the fiction he had been promoting.
The lawsuit also makes clear that:
Contrary to Fox’s lies, Ray was not a federal agent of any kind, was not law enforcement of any kind, and was not any type of government agent or informant, or acting on behalf of the government in any capacity when he participated in the protests on January 6th.
I was originally skeptical of a lawsuit by Epps as I questioned how claiming that someone was helping law enforcement could be viewed as defaming them. However, Epps’s attorneys more than answered that question in the lawsuit:
Fox did not falsely assert thatEpps was a federal agent acting with a legitimate law enforcement purpose. Fox did not falsely assert that Epps was an informant for a federal agency. Instead, Fox falsely asserted that Epps was a federal agent who was encouraging and inciting others to engage in unlawful activities. And not just any unlawful activity, but rather, to engage in an attack on the United States Capitol and democracy itself.
It is one thing to suggest that Epps was helping law enforcement in some legitimate law enforcement function. It is quite another to assert that Epps was helping law enforcement violate the law.
The lawsuit had one other revelation. Epps claims he has been told the DOJ finally does intend to charge him, and he blames Fox for that:
Finally, in May 2023, the Department of Justice notified Epps that it would seek to charge him criminally for events on January 6, 2021—two-and-a-half years later. The relentless attacks by Fox and Mr. Carlson and the resulting political pressure likely resulted in the criminal charges.
Epps seeks compensatory damages to be determined at trial, punitive damages and attorney fees.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/12/2180791/-Ray-Epps-Sues-Fox
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