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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.
What is your standard for what counts as uniquely lenient/generous? 40% of all J6 defendants (505 out of 1,265) plead guilty to only misdemeanors. 37% of all convicted J6 defendants (282 out of 749) did not receive any jail time. Of those sentenced to jail time, the median appears to be 45 days.
Only if you ignore the substantial number of defendants who ended up spending 12 - 18 months spent in pre-trial confinement. Note that the linked NPR piece is from April of 2022. That Ray Epps had been allowed to walk while 100s of others arrested for far less egregious behavior on the day were still languishing in prison weeks, months, years after the fact, is how he became the topic of "conspiracy theories" in the first place.
You're right that the sentencing data does not necessarily reflect pretrial detention, but you're not giving me any other data to fill those gaps. The article you linked doesn't cite how many were held pretrial or for how long, but I would assume a high positive correlation between pretrial detention and sentence severity because that's how it works in practice. As of May 2021 70% of J6 defendants had been released pre-trial compared to a release rate of 25% for all federal defendants, which makes sense given the unusually high number of federal misdemeanor prosecutions.
As far as I can tell, Ray Epps is heralded as an unusual case because he plead guilty to misdemeanors (so did 40% of other J6 defendants), served no jail time (so did 37% of others, likely significantly higher if you count only misdemeanors), and was not detained pretrial (so did 70% of others). I don't see what is unusual about any of these factors. I know working with data can be hard, but maybe it can be instructive if you can cite a single example of a J6 defendant who languished in prison for weeks for far less egregious behavior than Ray Epps, because I don't know the evidence behind your claim.
I don't know what gaps you expect me to fill, as the plain facts of the case seem pretty, well, plain.
Like I said the reason Epps came to the public's attention in the first place is that we had so-cal soccer-moms and that guy who took a selfie sitting at Nancy Pelosi's spend over a year in prison only to be released after pleading to misdemeanors. Meanwhile despite being readily identifiable as one of the more prominent bad-actors in several of the publicly available videos, Epps wasn't even charged with a crime until after AG Merrick Garland was asked directly about why he hadn't been charged during a house oversight hearing 9 months after the fact.
I thought you were a lawyer; how can you look at this situation and not conclude that there is something shady going on?
Well you said that the median sentence of 45 days ignores pretrial detention, which is true. I have no reason to believe it would be a meaningful difference, and you're not telling me how including pretrial detention would change the median, so that objection does not appear relevant.
You're presumably referring to Richard Barnett? He was convicted of 8 counts, 4 of which were felonies, and sentenced to 54 months in prison. I don't know if you were going off memory or another source, but either way it doesn't match up with reality. Googling this was very easy and I recommend it.
I already gave you the data for why his case seems very typical of other J6 defendants. Ray Epps is further distinguished by not having entered the Capitol, while only a portion of the 2,000 who did were ever charged with anything. You're more than welcome to either dispute the facts or dispute their relevance.
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