Why can’t the right-wing bubble give up on Ray Epps?

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To hear Ray Epps tell it, it’s Fox News’s fault that his life was ruined in at least two ways.

The first and most obvious is that the right-wing cable news channel repeatedly and energetically insisted over the course of months that Epps must somehow have been involved in triggering the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a function of his purported (and nonexistent) role as a government provocateur. This was mostly driven by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who mentioned him in at least 20 episodes of his prime-time show.

This attention, rooted in misconceptions if not willful dishonesty, made Epps a central focus of conspiracy theories about the riot. He shuttered his business, and he and his wife moved in order to avoid unwanted attention and threats.

But, again, it wasn’t just the unwarranted scrutiny from Fox News hosts and guests that led to this result. In a lawsuit Epps filed against Fox News on Wednesday, his attorneys blame Fox for his being at the Capitol in the first place.

Epps and his wife, Robyn, were “loyal Fox viewers and fans of Tucker Carlson and other Fox personalities,” the lawsuit reads. “… From the stories they heard on Fox and from their own experiences, Ray and Robyn believed that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump.”

“Ray and Robyn were persuaded by the lies broadcast by Fox asserting that the election had been stolen,” the lawsuit continues, “to exercise their perceived responsibilities as patriotic citizens to gather in the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 to ‘stop the steal.’”

There is obviously some opportunism here. Fox News unquestionably fostered the idea that the election was stolen in the weeks after the election; the channel continues to stoke skepticism about the legitimacy of the outcome. Whether it was the central driver of Epps’s traveling to D.C. to participate in the day’s protest, though, is hard to ascertain — even as it is obviously meant to serve the lawsuit as a reminder of Fox’s disregard for the truth.

But the point isn’t wrong. Fox News did elevate nonsense about the election, as established in the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems that was settled earlier this year. That the channel would then stoke another conspiracy about the Capitol riot fits a pattern.

The reason it did so is also not a mystery. Trump’s breathless insistences that the election was stolen were self-serving but effective. He folded this baseless idea into existing partisan rancor, driving demand within his base of support for allegations that supported the claim and diminishing any incentive for his allies to contradict him. Fox News tried briefly to avoid the whole thing but saw viewership leeched by right-wing outlets willing to say what Trump fans wanted to hear. Trump, of course, encouraged that defection.

After the riot, a similar demand for evidence that would exonerate Trump’s fans for their role in the violence emerged, and Carlson — always happy to stoke skepticism about the government — embraced the idea that the government triggered the riot. He lifted up a story from a fringe-right website that centered on Epps, and that was that.

The lawsuit notes that there is a surfeit of evidence exonerating Epps and no non-circumstantial evidence that he helped initiate the riot. There is no evidence he was working for the government and sworn testimony that he wasn’t. The video filmed on Jan. 5, 2021, in which he says protesters would need to go into the Capitol the following day involved an actual agitator, right-wing personality Tim Gionet. Footage of him talking to a rioter who was one of the first to overturn a barrier has also been elevated as evidence of his role, but he and that other rioter both testified under oath that Epps sought to defuse, not instigate, events.

And yet Epps remains a feverish focus of the right-wing fringe. Even as news broke of Epps’s lawsuit against Fox News, Republican legislators at a hearing centered on FBI Director Christopher A. Wray were alleging or insinuating that Epps played a role in instigating the riot.

“I want to turn my attention now to this fella, this character, Mr. Ray Epps,” Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Tex.) said at one point in the hearing. “We’ve all heard of him. We’ve heard of Mr. Ray Epps.”

“He was number 16 on your FBI most-wanted list,” Nehls continued. “He was encouraging people the night prior and the day to go into the Capitol. And Mr. Ray Epps can be seen at the first breach of Capitol grounds at approximately 12:50 p.m.”

This is not true. He was at the first breach, as explained above. Epps was not on the “most-wanted” list; his photo was on a list of people about whom the FBI was seeking information after the riot. When Epps saw himself on the list, by both his account and the government’s, he reached out to the FBI and spoke with investigators. His photo was subsequently removed from the page. It’s not clear that Epps ever encouraged people to enter the Capitol understanding that it was illegal to do so.

Nehls would go on to demand Wray answer whether Epps would be arrested, with Wray refusing to offer a response. That’s entirely normal, as it was in January 2022 when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) attempted to get another FBI official to talk about arresting Epps. In response to another question, Wray did say that “this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hard-working, dedicated men and women.”

As it turns out, the lawsuit made public during the hearing in which Nehls was participating revealed that Epps was informed by the Justice Department that he would be charged in relation to the riot.

“It appears to me you are protecting this guy!” Nehls, not knowing this, yelled at Wray. “I strongly recommend you get your house back in order!”

Epps’s lawsuit blames the attention from Fox News and “the resulting political pressure” for any criminal charges.

The question that’s worth asking is why. Not so much “why did Carlson and Fox News elevated allegations against Epps?” That seems easy to explain given the appetite among Trump supporters and (by extension) Fox News viewers for wild, exciting claims about rampant nefariousness by their opponents.

Instead, it’s worth asking why people like Nehls are still beating this same expired horse. The idea that Epps was central to the riot even if he’d done what is alleged is obviously false given the myriad investigations by law enforcement and the now-defunct House select committee. Evidence undercutting the idea that Epps played any role in stoking the riot is readily available, including evidence explaining the cherry-picked incidents Nehls focused on — incidents that have been scrutinized unendingly in the past two years.

To assume Epps was a government agent who helped cause the riot to happen is to simply ignore what’s known about his actions, just as surely as assuming that the election was stolen means ignoring reality. Targeting Epps, though, offers rewards for Republicans. It demonstrates hostility to the Justice Department (a popular performance in the era of Trump indictments). It positions you against the traditional media (such as The Washington Post), which insists that actual evidence take primacy over conspiracy theories. It allows you to cast other Jan. 6 riot participants as being unfairly targeted by the government, given that Epps walked free — at least for a while.

For rank-and-file Trump supporters, of course, targeting Epps is even easier. There’s no need to comport with reality or consider evidence. To ask “where is Ray Epps” is to make a pronouncement about your ideology and belief system as surely as is wearing a “Let’s go Brandon” T-shirt. Epps has the misfortune of being folded into a political lexicon where he is definitionally a bad guy and where anyone who disputes that fact is necessarily a bad guy, too. And once you’re in that lexicon, unfortunately, you’re there to stay.

There is one bright spot for Epps. Recent history strongly suggests that Ray Epps’s lawsuit against Fox News will result in a lucrative settlement in his favor. So he may forever be unfairly seen as an enemy of the political right to which he once and perhaps still belongs. But at least he’ll probably be rich.

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