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Ray Epps, pro-Trump rioter smeared by conspiracy theories, gets probation for role in Capitol riot
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/09/ray-epps-probation-capitol-riot-00134551
There's been an ongoing debate about Ray Epps on this site: Could he really be a Fed if the government is still trying to prosecute him? And the results are in: After heckling demonstrators to invade the Capitol, Epps was charged with a misdemeanor, uniquely leniency for J6 protesters, and will received one year probation. He will not see the inside of a jail cell. His suit against Fox News for defamation will be allowed to proceed, with the promise of a seven or eight-figure payout.
Almost simultaneously, the DOJ has announced that they will begin prosecuting J6 protesters who did not enter the Capitol building but were present in the demonstration outside. These protesters are expected to be charged with something more than misdemeanors.
A quick review of other J6 protesters
Enrique Tarrio was convicted as a terrorist for his role in organizing the Proud Boys even though he was not present at the Capitol or protest on J6
Owen Shroyer was jailed for speaking at the demonstration outside the Capitol, which prosecutors argued violated the terms of his parole (which stemmed from an occasion where he disrupted one of the House's impeachment procedings against Trump)
Joe Biggs, who was present at J6, was given more than a decade in jail after his efforts in taking down a fence around the Capitol were deemed to constitute terrorism, which resulted in his sentence being enhanced.
Steve Baker, an journalist who was present at J6 in his capacity as journalist for the Blaze, has been arrested by federal prosecutors, who sre seeking a 4-year jail sentence.
Ray Epps, who was present at J6, and encouraged people to enter the Capitol Building, will receive no jail time, will still be able to vote and carry a gun, and will possibly win a defamation payout of several million dollars. The government and the media agree that Ray Epps is not a federal agent, and that the accusation that he was caused him significant harm which is far worse than anything he deserves.
I used to think the J6 "fedsurrection" narrative was cope by right-wingers who weren't ready spiritually to defend the J6 protesters. I considered that, if you really believed the election was stolen, then a protest follows logically, except that that would make many conservatives uncomfortable. But, at this point, for me, it's pretty hard to deny that the government was up to something too. I could imagine that the government just had agents embedded to watch and follow along, but Ray Epps clearly did more than that.
I remember arguments on this site that, while it looked like Epps could be a Fed, the fact that he was still being prosecuted implied that maybe it wasn't so. Given his uniquely generous outcome, which almost amounts to an award, I'd like to reopen the discussion.
I changed my mind on Epps during our last discussion. I'm not particularly invested in the question of whether some participants in Jan 6 were feds or not, and I was totally willing to believe Epps was. However, I think a careful examination of the relevant law makes it much less likely that his light punishment is indicative of him being treated with kid gloves.
The most notable things Epps did was loudly advocate for entering the capital. But it's difficult to actually make a case based on this. First amendment jurisprudence makes it really really hard to prove incitement, and conspiracy charges require agreement - and it's notable that he gets shouted down with accusations of being a fed when he starts yelling about going into the capitol. If he's a conspirator, who are his co-conspirators? There's a video of him whispering to another guy shortly before a barrier is breached but both Epps' and the other guy's accounts of what he said aren't incriminating.
In short, I got convinced by the fact that the charges that I thought he should be up for are just a really hard lift - as also evidenced by the fact that no one else, even Trump himself, has been charged for incitement of a riot (and as an aside, while the Colorado court found Trump to have incited Jan 6 by the standard of "clear and compelling evidence", an implication of that ruling is that he was not guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt"). And the feds hate losing cases, so they tend to drop charges that aren't rock solid.
Take out any way of charging him for things he said, and it's hard to nail him on anything other than weak "disorderly conduct" type charges. Someone who entered the Capitol later during the event and walked around a bit before leaving while damaging nothing feels morally much less culpable than Epps, but they actually have committed an action that is easier to prosecute more harshly. The law doesn't match our intuitions perfectly, some people get a raw deal and some get lucky. Such is life.
The main remaining thing that I find strange about the Epps case is that he went on repeatedly about entering the Capitol, but then didn't actually do so himself. A lot of people clearly shared his belief that they should enter the Capitol, and acted on it, but he didn't. Why? Change of heart? Just a coward? Could be, I guess. It's weird, but not so weird that him being some sort of plant is the only plausible explanation.
At the end of the day though, regardless of whether the motte of "some government officials were involved in Jan 6" is true or not, the bailey of "Jan 6 was orchestrated by the feds to make Trump and his supporters look bad" is obviously false. Maybe some Capitol police shared the goals of the rioters and deliberately let them in. Maybe some crook who was being used as an informant went and committed more crimes. But the driving force behind Jan 6 was obviously Trump and his supporters, and there is no clearer evidence of this than the fact that they continue to defend and justify Jan 6. If it was all a ploy to discredit Trump, why is he going around demanding Biden release the "J6 hostages"? Why is he promising to issue pardons? It can't simultaneously be true that it was a "fedsurrection" and that it was just a "peaceful and patriotic protest" whose participants are being unjustly prosecuted.
What are you talking about? DOJ Attorney Matthew Graves has even announced this week that they are looking into prosecuting J6 Protesters who did not enter the Capitol building but might have entered other restricted areas -- the entire J6 campaign by the DOJ is inventing new applications of existing laws. If they can't find anything to prosecute Ray Epps for, it's because they don't want to. Why else would motivate the judge not to reprimand Epps at all, but to instead say he was a good boy who got caught up in unfortunate conspiracy theories?
I don't understand why these are two irreconcilable positions: "The feds entrapped MAGA in a sting." Not only does that reconcile your two positions, but it is in fact the argument being made by just about every J6 truther.
What do you expect those lesser offenders to be charged with? I expect they will cop charges very similar to the ones Epps got - "disorderly conduct" and suchlike.
The positions are irreconcilable because they disagree on the fundamental question of whether or not J6 was actually a bad thing. There's an incoherence to saying "the Jan 6rs did nothing wrong, and also, the feds made them do it". If they did nothing wrong, how were they "instigated" into doing it? Conversely, if the feds instigated an insurrection, that means that Jan 6 was an insurrection.
If MAGA was entrapped in a sting, it was a "sting" where they were "entrapped" into conducting what the majority of Republicans now consider a legitimate protest.
The normie Republican position is that J6 was justified because it was not an insurrection. The government's position is that J6 was an attempt to overthrow the government. The "sting" theory is that the Feds took justified protest and tried to make it look like an attempt to overthrow the government, so they could persecute it.
Who decided that Ray Epps was a "lesser offender"? The feds are charging lots of people with more for less. Ray Epps was egging people on into entering the Capitol, and the media and government are all talking about how this poor guy has been targeted by a smear!
How did the feds make J6 look like an attempt to overthrow the government without getting anyone to do anything wrong?
The Supreme Court of the United States, in 1969, when it decided in Brandenburg v Ohio that the First Amendment protected speech so strongly that it became nearly impossible to convict a person of inciting a riot. Alternatively, the framers of the First Amendment itself.
I agree that the feds are charging people with more for less, but the rules they have to play by say they probably can't convict Epps for inciting a riot. Personally I think the First Amendment should be abolished which would make it much more possible to prosecute the kind of egregious behaviour Epps engaged in. But a lot of Americans disagree with me and it's their country.
I'm going to repost the original Revolver News article here, since I posted it in another comment. Ray Epps did a lot more than exercise his First Amendment rights:
https://revolver.news/2021/10/meet-ray-epps-the-fed-protected-provocateur-who-appears-to-have-led-the-very-first-1-6-attack-on-the-u-s-capitol/
Epps orchestrated the breach of the capitol, announced before J6 his intention to breach the Capitol, incited protesters during J6 to join him in breaching the Capitol, and then was put on the FBI's "Capitol Violence Most Wanted List," from which he was quietly dropped as soon as investigative reporters started asking questions. And there's more.
They are not playing by any rules, a claim I have repeated several times now to which you seem not to have said anything.
You're posting on a website that was created to escape censorship. Are you trying to look silly?
This is your reminder that AshLael is literally a paid political operative in meatspace. Any conversations you have with them should be viewed through that light.
In Australia.... He has his biases, which color his responses to this issue, but we all do.
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Which crime do you think he could be convicted of, what are the elements of that crime, and what evidence exists to prove all elements beyond a reasonable doubt?
I think the best way to contest that claim is to talk in detail about the actual rules that are observably being applied, which I am doing.
I have a longstanding view that the US bill of rights was a big mistake, which I have articulated multiple times. It has put judges in the position of having to effectively make policy decisions about what constitutes due process or equal protection or free speech that are always going to be somewhat arbitrary and politically controversial, and that in turn has made it very important to staff the judiciary with judges that interpret these very vague provisions the way your side wants, which has created a highly politicised judiciary.
I think a much better system is to allow democratically elected governments much more latitude in making the laws they want, for policy choices to be explicitly legislated, and for judges to have a much more restrained and uncontroversial role in applying the law. Sometimes governments will pass bad laws, but there is a much more direct and workable system for the public to rectify those cases than when judges make bad constitutional rulings.
If the same standard was being applied to everyone (which is different question from what I think he should be convicted of), I see no reason to not at least try to pin "seditious conspiracy" on him, like the guy that got 20 years without ever being present in Washington.
This is not a valid criterion to prove or disprove the point being debated here. The attempt to prove something beyond reasonable doubt happens after the charges are made, in court, not before. Rittenhouse was charged with murder despite exonerating evidence being public before the charges were made, for example.
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