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Notes -
January 6th agitator Ray Epps has pled guilty to one charge of disorderly conduct. The NYT story contains this sentence:
I'm not so sure about that. For those who haven't paid attention (a group that included myself until a discussion here a while back), Epps is on video repeatedly urging other members of the crowd to go into the Capitol. Many people have speculated that he was in fact some form of federal agent or informant. The fact that this is the legal outcome for him heightens, rather than lessens, my personal suspicion that he was working for the feds.
It is a very minor charge. Now granted, Epps did not enter the Capitol himself - but his open agitation of the attack nonetheless seems to me like it should constitute a significantly more serious offence, such as incitement to riot.
Speaking of which, it's very odd that he did not go into the Capitol himself, given that he loudly and repeatedly urged others to.
The fact that this minor charge plea deal has taken so long is very eyebrow raising as well. We typically saw the less serious cases dealt with quite quickly, while the big trials with serious jail time on the line took much longer - and even they got dealt with more quickly than Epps!
It's also extremely curious to me that they arranged a plea deal with Epps before he was ever charged with anything. That's not the normal way things go, as far as I'm aware - usually they throw everything they can at you, and then agree to drop some charges in exchange for guilty pleas for the others.
Now, it may be that there are matters of fact or law that I'm not aware of that makes all of this very normal and reasonable, and if so I would be delighted to be informed of them. But as it stands I am at a loss to explain how this guy is getting this treatment if he is not some kind of undercover operative.
EDIT: Thanks to @huadpe and @Gillitrut who have convinced me that the elements of more serious charges against Epps could probably not be satisfied.
He also was listed as one of the top people wanted by the FBI until they quietly took it down. So going from most wanted to a barely misdemeanor smells fishy.
My default now is to assume the FBI is actually extremely incompetent. Therefore, if they proceeded to charge this guy, they would've had to reveal some embarrassing mistake made in investigating him so they're choosing to instead let him off with a wrist slap.
He was on their top 30 sought list at number 16, and when the Revolver published their article they removed him from the list.
They aren't incompetent, he probably just wasn't theirs and the operation was only kinda covered up by the FBI, but ran by some other spooks.
EDIT: I'm also pissed how searches go. Epps story was broken by Revolver. Try searching for 'Epps revolver list'. On duckduckgo, the search result I meant was 20 results down. On Yandex, right on the top. I guess it goes without saying that Google is messing with it.
For those search terms the Revolver article is #3 on Kagi, which isn’t plausibly boosting conspiracy theory adjacent content.
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Your default should be that they are extremely corrupt and partisan. Lawyers for the FBI straight up falsified documents for the FISA court. FBI officials were literally despairing their main squeeze hilldawg was robbed of her presidency and were conspiring to nail Trump for literally anything they could try and think of. Including wiretaping the god damned sitting president of the united states and trying to entrap his underlings.
The demographics suggest it shouldn't be completely partisan, but I'm guessing the leadership is, and enough rank and file are so it can behave in a nakedly partisan manner.
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