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Notes -
Last week, @SlowBoy posted about Ray Epps being sentenced to probation and asserted this was a "uniquely generous outcome" for Epps. I was puzzled by this assertion and so I asked some clarifying questions and most of my responses were heavily downvoted. As a barometer of community sentiment, I tried to understand why my questions would be met so negatively and so this post is my attempt to formulate some theories. I am open to feedback on how I can post better!
Theory 1: I focused on the wrong parameters for evaluating Ray Epps' situation
I would like to think I have some practical experience in evaluating whether a given defendant is treated with unusual leniency/harshness. I once had a client who was arrested along one other guy at the same place, both for illegally possessing a firearm. Both were felons with comparable criminal history but in addition to a gun, the other guy also was caught with what the cops referred to as a "pharmacy" of drugs in his backpack (very likely worth at least $20k on the street) and also very openly admitted to police that the gun was his. So it was really weird that my guy got charged with a gun felony while the street pharmacist was charged with only a gun misdemeanor and offered a diversion program on top of that (charges get dismissed if he stays out of trouble). I investigated more of the pharmacist's background and found out he's been arrested at least three times within the last year for exactly the same conduct (gun + drug backpack) and each time no charges were filed. I had no way of proving this conclusively but the only explanation that made sense is that he was an informant of some kind. Letting the prosecutors know I was aware of pharmacist's disparate treatment was likely instrumental in getting my guy a misdemeanor plea offer.
Obviously that was a serendipitous comparison scenario, but when I was presented with Ray Epp's situation the reasonable starting point was to examine the severity of charges and sentences that other J6 defendants received. The DOJ and other sources make this information very easy to find. At least from a bird's eye view, nothing about Ray Epps pleading guilty to misdemeanors (505 out of all 1,265 J6 defendants also did), avoiding jail time (282 out of 749 convicted J6 defendants also did), or avoiding pretrial detention (70% of J6 defendants also did) seemed unusual.
If there are factors besides the severity of the charges, sentencing, or pretrial detention that I should have evaluated instead, I would love to know about them. Maybe I can even use this information at my real job.
Theory #2: I posted false or misleading information
Maybe I focused on the correct parameters, but DOJ information is either false or misleading? That's certainly a possibility, and it wouldn't be the first time a government agency made shit up. But if so, either some evidence of this duplicity or some alternative source should be offered and I'm aware of neither.
Theory #3: I posted truthful information that people thought was false or misleading
This is an online forum and we often shoot from the hip when posting. Sometimes mistakes happen. @HlynkaCG for example responded to my questions by offering two points of comparison as a contrast to how Ray Epps was treated: "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." I don't know who the soccer-moms are but the Nancy Pelosi reference is presumably referring to Richard Barnett who was convicted of 4 felonies and sentenced to 54 months in prison, definitely not "released after pleading to misdemeanors". As I showcased more than a year ago, this wouldn't be the first time someone here makes a confident assertion on the topic of J6 or on related election fraud theories that are not necessarily reflected in reality.
Speaking personally, I would react with genuine gratitude if anyone pointed out I had made a false or misleading assertion, because it's not something I ever wish to repeat intentionally. Part of that effort requires introspection to investigate what went wrong in the process. I again maintain there is absolutely nothing shameful about making mistakes, and part of what I value about this community is how much we celebrate remedial acknowledgement and introspection for faulty thinking and I hope HlynkaCG can shed light on the matter.
Theory #4: I posted truthful information that could lead to false or misleading implications
This reaction is commonly encountered, and likely stems from a poor decoupling ability. For example, it's likely true that Africans had a higher life expectancy enslaved in the US than they did free in Africa at the time of the slave trade. Whether or not this is true is purely a factual determination, but many people can't help it and get ahead of themselves to pre-emptively address what they believe are necessary implications of this fact. The only way that the "slavery can raise life expectancy for the enslaved" fact could in any way threaten the position of "slavery is bad" is if the former is a significant pillar of the latter, or if someone had succumbed to 'arguments as soldiers' mentality. The classic example of this scenario is AOC's famously-lampooned "Factually inaccurate but morally right".
And so I've often wondered if this is driving part of the negative reaction to fact-checking J6-related claims. Maybe challenging one specific premise (Ray Epps was treated with unusual leniency) necessarily challenges an overall conclusion (J6 defendants are treated unfairly) because someone assumes the two are coupled at the hips together:
I don't know what the solution is to this lack of decoupling. It's really hard to teach nuance.
Theory #6: I'm ruining the fun
People have deeply cherished beliefs they want to hold on to, and challenging those beliefs ruins the prospect of a good time. This is the least charitable theory obviously. The operating principle of the Motte is to be "a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas" but unfortunately this has and will forever risk being prescriptive more than descriptive. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias clearly exist but it stretches my empathy to its limits for me to try and understand what could motivate someone to sacrifice truth-seeking in order to pursue belief affirmation points. I don't understand it and, given the nature of its manifestation, I don't anticipate a transparent confession. I offered a template of what an introspective admission could potentially look like when I admitted to having previously believed in abolishing police/prisons despite my awareness that I lacked the ability to defend those beliefs, but maybe that confession was only possible because enough time had passed to give me distance from the sting.
True to the spirit of this post, I'm open to being proven wrong.
I didn't reply to you at the time because I thought the conversation up to before you posted had covered everything important. I didn't downvote you.
I think you posted true-but-misleading information. Sure, Ray Epps was not the only J6 protester to only receive probation. In that respect, his situation is not unique. However consider the other elements that make his case totally unique:
He is on video having encouraged protesters to go into the Capitol Building, and on record before J6 wanting to invade the Capitol. He did not go into the building even as he encouraged others to do so.
He was on the FBI's most-wanted J6 protesters list up until the moment news organizations (Revolver News) started covering him. He was only charged after Merrick Garland was asked about him in a hearing. (I do not have the video in front of me, as I recall it Garland was asked about Eps not by name but in terms that could not have referred to anybody else.)
Eps was undercharged relative to other manor J6 figures, especially in the context of other figures being overcharged. (What's the "baseline charge" protesters deserve? That's a subjective unanswerable question. However I think it's hard to contest that the whole J6 prosecution is unprecedented in American history, and even if you think DOJ is justified, it's hard to argue why Eps wasn't charged more seriously.)
Leftwing news outlets and even the judge at trial all bewailed how poor Eps was made to suffer as the victim of conspiracy theories. This is uniquely generous! Maybe there are some other outliers (I know there's some grandma who went viral by apologizing for her participation and calling MAGA a cult). But, by and large, the same people calling J6 an attack on democracy are saying Ray Eps is a victim. Why? -- he wanted to attack democracy! I am not aware of the judges treating anyone else so leniently.
Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars. It's shameless. I don't suppose some secret tribunal met and decided that Ray Epps gets his payout. But nobody in DOJ is working to stop him from making millions. If the DOJ didn't like this, they could try to find something else to charge him with. (Double Jeopardy is no guarantee -- the DOJ made big headlines about potentially investigating Darren Wilson over shooting Mike Brown. If Merrick Garland wanted to, he would get on TV and say Epps deserves to be looked at again.)
Conclusion: Ray Epps was handled uniquely leniently, in a way most people would understand those terms. Epps' treatment only looks normal within the context of an excel sheet of convictions, which doesn't tell nearly the full story.
On a purely academic level, I wonder if there's an argument that, in isolation, "he's a fed!" is not actually defamatory. The claim is (I assume) that he was defamed as "working for the feds by encouraging protesters to enter the Capitol," but the second half of that claim is pretty evidently true from the video evidence. Is the first half alone, even if it is false, a negative claim about a person? I'm sure it is to some people, but it seems fraught to allow a court (in which most of the professional parties probably see "working for the government" as a positive, or at worst neutral claim) to generally rule as defamation something that only a small minority actually find disparaging. The overall claim is probably disparaging to the government itself, but I'm not aware of any law against alleging government conspiracies.
Sure, I believe he's received a bunch of hate mail for these accusations, but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course of anyone who achieves that level of infamy.
Can’t find the court docs at the moment, but
If he is able to prove financial damage to his business, that’d probably satisfy the legal requirement.
If the statement is not defamatory as a matter of law, damages don't matter.
Sorry, I was unclear.
I think the alleged harms to Epps’ business satisfy the fourth element of defamation. I’m not commenting on the other three.
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https://revolver.news/2023/07/against-all-odds-rap-legend-tupac-shakur-shot-down-ray-epps-defamation-claim-against-tucker-and-revolver-news/
Revolver news agrees with you.
Turns out that there's actually legal precedent that calling someone a government agent doesn't count as defamation.
I think you'll find there's some reason this precedent doesn't apply in the instant case.
I think that's a fairly likely outcome. Hell, given Fox's actions as of late I wouldn't be surprised if they throw the case and just give in anyway because the legal settlement would be worth paying in exchange for the political outcome.
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I think the 'fed' modifier turns it from "honest person encouraging protestors to enter the Capitol (true)" to "dishonest person sets other people up to get arrested." It's not the working for the government that is defamation, it's the claim that he orchestrated a false flag.
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Edit: Merrick Garland timeline, and MAGA grandma below
I really appreciate the specifics in your response! I'll go point by point first, from the standpoint of how unusually Ray Epps was treated:
Factor 1: Epps encouraged others to enter the Capitol
It's true that Epps 1) repeatedly encouraged others to go into the Capitol "peacefully" (whatever that means) and 2) did not enter the Capitol himself. Moreover, he's captured on video trying to calm protestors down. I agree #1 is a negative factor for sentencing, but would you agree that #2 is a positive factor for sentencing? I don't know if the two factors exactly cancel each other out but it's fairly routine for the legal system to have drastically lowered penalties for criminals who change their mind at the last minute.
Besides that, both Alex Jones (though he did say "We are peaceful" and "we need to not have the confrontation with the police") and Nick Fuentes ("Keep moving towards the Capitol! It appears we are taking the Capitol!") encouraged others to march towards the Capitol but did not enter themselves, and unlike Epps neither of them were charged with any crimes.
Because far more prominent individuals who encouraged others to go to the Capitol and were not even charged, while Epps was charged with misdemeanors, this particular factor does not indicate that Epps was treated unusually. What do you think I'm missing?
Factor 2: FBI's most wanted
It's true that Epps was put on an FBI "Seeking Information" list as Photograph #16. He still shows up on Twitter, but no longer on the official list, but lots of other photos have also been taken down from that list (they're numbered sequentially so if you start at the beginning you'll see it goes 1, 2, 5, 9, 13, etc). I don't understand how this is indicative of unusual treatment if the FBI is removing dozens (hundreds?) of other photos.
Regarding the timing of charges, it's true that Epps wasn't charged until a mere 3 days after Merrick Garland was asked about him.[Edit: I hadn't looked closely when I posted this, but Merrick Garland was asked about Ray Epps by Thomas Massie on 9/20/23 and charges against Ray Epps were actually filed two days prior on 9/18/23. Epps appeared virtually in court on the 20th to plead guilty, which heavily indicates the plea was negotiated a couple of months prior]. The timing could be more than just a coincidence, but in what direction? You could argue that Epps was treated unusually harshly if you compare his conduct to Jones and Fuentes (who have not been charged) but you're arguing the opposite and I don't understand how.Factor 3: Undercharged relative to others
It's true it's difficult to draw a direct comparison about conduct regarding what the "baseline charge" should be, but you're begging the question by saying Epps was undercharged "relative to other major J6 figures". Regarding his specific conduct (and not the attention he's garnered) why should Epps be considered a major figure to begin with? To conduct any comparison it would be helpful if you can identify an illustrative example of a J6 defendant who acted similarly to Ray Epps but was charged/sentenced much more harshly.
Factor 4: Victim of Conspiracies
This is a recursive argument. The judge at his sentencing said "While many defendants have been vilified in a way unique to Jan. 6, you seem to be the first to have suffered for what you didn't do". I don't deny that's a unique situation, but to establish that Epps was treated uniquely generously you need a baseline to compare against.
I don't know the grandma you're referring to[Edit: Found what I think is the grandma, who entered the capitol and got 2 months in jail], so all I have to compare against is the fact that Epps avoided jail just like 37% of other convicted J6 defendants.Maybe if we had a hypothetical Ray Epps Two who was the subject of similarly intense conspiracy theories but whose sentencing judge did not acknowledge his suffering then you could argue that Ray Epps One was treated unusually generously, but if it's not reflected in sentencing why would that matter?
Factor 5: Epps' suit against Fox News
I don't understand any of this. Why is the suit shameless? How could the DOJ possibly stop Epps from suing Fox News? Even if somehow they charged him with triple-digit felonies, he would still be able to sue (almost a quarter of federal lawsuits are filed by prisoners!). This is a baffling point.
TL;DR
Fuentes is widely believed to be either operated by feds due to threat of prosecution, or behaving as if he were by playing the persona of the degenerate racist piece of shit. Exactly what the media wants. He does nonsensical things like that time he endorse a schizo black man for .. president ?
Alex Jones is a non-stop noise generator who can discredit anything by merely speaking about it. Those aren't really the best examples.
That's fair pushback, what examples would you suggest as superior comparisons? From another post of mine:
Are there any people like him who were on the scene, that loud who got no actual time?
I already mentioned Fuentes and Alexander who were on the scene and loud and were never even charged.
If "Alexander" refers to Jones, then you are again being misleading.
I'm not sure how you could've missed that I was talking about Ali Alexander, that was only one level above.
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(sigh)
Yes, we all live in Surkov's world, despite not even being Russian.
I don't understand what this means
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First off, I think you mean "into" here. But anyway, complete side track, but it's sort of hilarious watching this regularly-scheduled program on a completely different screen than watching the Section 3 disqualification program. Like, here, the fact that someone just encouraged others to go into the Capitol is good reason to not charge them. But ya know, with Trump, he didn't even do that, yet it is clearly and obviously "engaging in insurrection".
No I meant "to" because I didn't see anything about Alex Jones encouraging others to go inside. I don't know what you're referring to about regularly-scheduled program, it's hard to compare behaviors from different people because people don't act like mimes and do exactly the same thing at the same time at the same place. Best you can do is outline what the relevant factors and dimensions are and then analyze the actions according to that template. Inevitably you're bound to encounter reasonable disagreement throughout that process.
I mean, I agree with basically your entire comment about what we can do. The bit about "regularly-scheduled program" is that if you just look at the screen about this topic, it might on the surface look like everyone is doing this sort of 'best thing', outlining relevant factors, etc. It looks like the normal, ho-hum, program of people doing the best thing. Alternatively, if you just look at the screen about Section 3 disqualification, it might also look on the surface like everyone is doing this sort of 'best thing', outlining relevant factors, etc. But then it just strikes you when you see both of them smashed together. Like, really?! Trump "engaged in insurrection" on one screen, but we appear to have just an entirely different outline of relevant factors on the other screen. Just wild in contrast.
That's how the law works in general. There's enough precedents and opinions laying around that in any given case, you can credibly apply them to make the case go either way; in fact, almost every case has at least one lawyer on each side doing just that. So how do you actually decide the case? By criteria outside the law, which you then justify using the appropriate set of precedents. If you really can't find any which support the thing you want... make something up that sounds all legal-like, building on the closest thing (e.g. the "bad actor" test making Trump's speech not eligible for First Amendment protection).
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Before I respond to any specifics I want to lay out a few general suppositions: I think it's totally reasonable, almost necessary, to believe that the FBI had informants in MAGA groups and at J6; J6 prosecutions (even if you think they're legitimate) have a strong political dimension.
I can't read Epps' mind; I don't know how thoroughly the FBI was embedded in J6 attendees; I don't know whether the FBI orchestrated any part of J6 or it's only been weaponized in the aftermath; I don't have and might never have any records that will prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. I do know that some specific people have been caught lying about J6 (the J6 Committee, government reports of officers killed, Nancy Pelosi's bodyguard, etc.).
Let's concede that it's entirely possible Epps could really be innocent. We're all just filling in blanks here. But for the reasons already discussed, I do not find Epps' total innocence very likely.
Onto some of your specific points:
Jones is not known to have been near the Capitol at all: he was speaking from Lafayette Square. This is in a different category from Epps, who was present at the Capitol and encouraging people to go in (while pointedly not going in himself). I don't think this is an apples-to-apples comparison.
The lack of charges for Fuentes are taken as suspicious by many people. It's openly discussed whether he was a Fed. I have not bothered looking into the accusations, there are a lot of arguments floating around. My supposition is that he's been a party to so many shenanigans by this point that the Feds would be stupid if they haven't at least tried to recruit him. He could also be genuinely that dumb.
In part because he was near the top of the FBI's J6 List until he wasn't. In part because he's a highly-visible face saying everything lefties have accused J6 of representing. He was an Oath Keepers chapter president. He he was on restricted Capitol Grounds. He fits the exact profile of people who have been otherwise severely charged.
Granted that Epps is not an Alex Jones, or Enrique Tarrio, or someone who otherwise might have been presumed to be a leader within MAGA before the J6 events. But that's not the only qualification. Epps is perhaps the most visible face of protesters agitating to enter the Capitol, the very proof that J6 was part of serious sedition, and all he gets is a slap on the wrist.
Yes? I don't disagree, but don't know how that's relevant to whether Epps was treated with unusual leniency.
Innocent of what? He already plead guilty.
That's totally fair that you don't think Alex Jones is a good comparison, so who would you propose comparing against? You can't say that someone was treated "unusually" unless you already have a comparison in mind, so who are you comparing Epps against?
I don't know what you mean by "near the top" except that he was one of the first to be put on the 'seeking information' list. Chronology does not determine severity, so why is this significant? What does it mean to have a highly-visible face? People know who he is because he received significant right-wing media attention, so is that your metric? What are lefties claiming J6 represents and how does Epps represent it? It's true that he used to be an Oath Keeper chapter president in 2011, why is that significant? It's true that he was on restricted Capitol Grounds, but so were up to 10,000 other people, so why is that significant? What exactly is the "exact profile" of people who were charged? Did you determine this profile by examining all 1,265 J6 defendants? Are you claiming that prosecutions are decided by looking for this profile? This is an extremely confusing paragraph.
You concede that Epps would not be presumed to be a leader of any kind and I just want to understand how you contrasted his situation to determine that he was treated unusually. I again repeat that a really good starting point would be for you to pick one comparable J6 defendant that you think was treated much more harshly than Epps.
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Is there video of Alex Jones telling people to enter the capitol? I thought there was opposite video evidence, of him saying "don't enter it's a trap".
Search engines are fucking useless these days. I can find hundreds of second hand descriptions from "reputable" news sources, but it's nearly impossible to find the first hand video evidence.
I remember Alex Jones in a video interview. Saying what I described in the first paragraph and then I remember looking it up and confirming it at the time with video evidence. But it's seemingly impossible to retrace steps.
I also saw a video of him driving around in his hummer shouting on a bullhorn for people not to enter, at the time -- search seems remarkably fucked indeed. (and/or youtube has been scrubbing this sort of thing -- probably the fastest way to find the video would be to go ask on /pol/, which is quite the state of affairs)
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I have no seen any evidence or video of Alex Jones explicitly telling people to enter the capitol. He was just the first person that came to mind who seemed more-or-less comparable to Epps along the "whip up crowd to head to the Capitol" axis.
This is the only video I could find, and only by adding "Joe Rogan" to my search terms which is apparently an alternate tag for "original video". In the video Alex Jones is telling people to avoid a confrontation with Police, and to march to the other side. He is a hundred or more feet away from the capitol building.
Mostly you can know that Alex Jones had zero involvement, because there is no footage of him having any involvement. If there was anything remotely implicating him it would have been blasted on every news channel. Your vague intuition of "Alex Jones would do something like this" is the exact same intuition as the people that put that intuition there in the first place. If they could have fed it, they would have.
Its also part of my continuing frustration with the state of the world. Common perception has diverged massively. You have the intuition that Alex Jones would do something. I have the intuition that Alex Jones would be set up and blamed for doing that thing while being totally innocent. The evidence for your intuition is easily findable in a bunch of second hand news sources that all vaguely hint in that direction, without ever saying enough to get hit with a slander lawsuit. The evidence for my intuition is buried and nearly impossible to find despite it being something I heard on the most listened to podcast series in the world.
I have no idea what you're referring to about my "intuition" that "Alex Jones would do something like this". Do what? Where are you getting this from?
Why did he come to mind, I'd call that intuition.
@ArjinFerman also
I don't want any ambiguity here, I never said or implied that Alex Jones "would do something like this" (I still don't know what is the 'something' you're referring to here), I never spoke of potential or possibilities about his conduct. The reason he came to mind is because I was trying to think of individuals comparable to Epps, and I first did so by deconstructing Epps's conduct into "He was on Capitol Grounds but did not enter, but encouraged others to enter". I figured finding someone who was caught on tape precisely asking people to enter was going to be a challenge, so I abstracted the latter factor into a more generalized "whipped up crowd to head towards the Capitol" to broaden the search. Alex Jones came to mind because he was there and I remembered him leading a "1776!" chant with a crowd. It's not going to be a perfect comparison, but I'm trying to do the work SlowBoy hasn't by proactively looking for individuals to compare Epps against, and I'm more than open to other suggestions.
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From your post in which you're using Alex Jones as an example of someone who behaved analogously to Epps.
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Two things can be true here. (1) that Eps committed crimes on J6 for which he deserves to be convicted and (2) he is unfairly the target of right wing conspiracy theories of being a federal agent. Eps can be a bad person in one sense and a victim in another. There is no contradiction here. In terms of how judges have treated other defendants, what other defendants have been the target of conspiracy theories like Eps?
Maybe I am the one who is confused but I'm pretty confident the DoJ does not have a mechanism to force someone to drop a civil suit. If Fox News did defame Eps by calling him a federal agent when he wasn't, why should the DoJ step in (to whatever extent it can) to stop him? Maybe Eps' actions are shameless if you assume he is a federal agent but from another angle he's another entity (like Dominion) defamed by Fox News and trying to protect his reputation.
Sure, but this is not how people emotionally reason. Epps committed what is, according to what the government claims in other cases, an attack on American democracy. How much sympathy do you have when bad things happen to bad people? Somehow, though, charity runs Epps' way.
I hope if I am accused of a crime, all the judges decide I was punished enough by the bad press, and in fact deserve the chance to sue for millions.
Can you please explain how you think the civil court system works? In your mind, do you believe that a judge presiding over a criminal matter can "allow" civil suits to proceed? I'm especially very intensely curious about what role you think the DOJ plays in "allowing" suits to proceed.
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I mean, I personally do not have much sympathy for Epps but I understand why other people do.
I do not understand this sentence. A judge in a criminal case cannot, as a general matter, decide a defendant cannot file a civil case against some third party. It is up to whatever judge is hearing the civil case to decide whether a case can go forward or not and a criminal conviction in some other case is not, for I think obvious reasons, generally disqualifying.
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Is there any legal basis for this at all? Would I be able to escape a criminal conviction by having a bunch of people on twitter talk about how I was a federal agent? If this is actually a criteria that's being used to adjust sentencing and shift legal outcomes, I've just come up with an incredibly profitable new business idea that will help get people out of sticky prosecutions even when there's direct video evidence of them committing the crime! Of course I don't actually believe that's the case - he's not being let off due to an actual legal principle. There are hundreds of conspiracy theories circulating about Donald Trump, and I highly doubt that he's going to be able to dodge the charges by using a similar precedent.
But Eps didn't escape a federal criminal conviction. He pleaded guilty to federal charges. My understanding is judges have a pretty wide latitude to consider a defendant's circumstances at sentencing, so nothing explicitly prevents a judge considering these factors.
My apologies for being unclear - please replace "criminal conviction" with "prison sentence".
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Not explicitly so and not unique to conspiracy theories, but judges and prosecutors do indeed factor into their decisions whether someone has "suffered enough already". The prime example I can think of are deciding whether to charge negligent parents whose child is killed as a result of being forgotten inside a hot car. I also had a client who avoided jail time on her third DUI, most likely because the collision she caused severely mangled her foot and left her in a wheelchair.
I can see the tenuous basis/linkage here, and I appreciate you providing an answer to my question. But, unfortunately, it isn't enough to change my mind on this matter - I can't understand how Ray Epps gets away with what he did on the basis of people saying mean things about him online when this same principle is not applied to anywhere near the same degree when it comes to others. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were the target of far more online conspiracy theories than Ray Epps was, but that hasn't impacted their sentencing or prosecution in the slightest.
Well there's two questions here and it's important not to confuse them:
I've laid out my reasons for why Ray Epps does not appear to have been treated unusually when comparing his charges/sentences to other comparable J6 defendants. In terms of how much him being the victim of a conspiracy theory affected the outcome, it's hard to say because his ultimate sentence was well within the ballpark compared to other defendants. I do think it's plausible just based on the fact that this is indeed a factor in other cases, but his sentence was expected to be low anyways. You can read Epps' sentencing memo filed by his attorney for further details on how his life had been affected.
This is why a comparison to Epstein/Maxwell wouldn't make sense. The "suffered enough already" factor might sway judges/prosecutors at the margins, particularly for petty or questionable offenses, but I can't imagine a scenario where it would justify leniency for someone accused of running an underage sex trafficking ring.
Could you please show me where you actually did this? I gave the post I was responding to the and the links a few looks, but I couldn't find any where you went through the claims made in the Revolver piece in great detail.
Also, I'd just like to add as an aside that I don't think "being the victim of a conspiracy theory" is actually what is responsible for his lenient sentencing - rather, it was due to him being a federal informant or otherwise working for the government. I think that the conspiracy theory claim is being used as a figleaf for those other reasons. And finally...
Petty or questionable offences? Epstein was just running an underage sex trafficking ring, and the government didn't even think that was a big enough deal for him to go to prison the first time he did it. They haven't even gone after many of the confirmed customers of the sex ring - Ehud Barak is still a free man, as is Prince Andrew. In contrast, I've been repeatedly informed by "reliable sources" that what took place on January 6 was a violent insurrection that attempted to end our democracy, and is actually legally comparable to raising an army and literally waging war on the US government. The idea that people being mean on twitter could make up for that beggars belief.
I was addressing whether or not Epps was treated unusually as a defendant, and I examined that by comparing him to all other J6 defendants: "Ray Epps pleading guilty to misdemeanors (505 out of all 1,265 J6 defendants also did), avoiding jail time (282 out of 749 convicted J6 defendants also did), or avoiding pretrial detention (70% of J6 defendants also did) seemed unusual." What claim within the Revolver piece addresses whether or not Epps was treated unusually that I did not address?
Do you believe that the 37% of other convicted J6 defendants who also avoided jail time were also federal informants or otherwise working for the government?
Sure, that would beggar belief if it happened. I've seen no indication that's the case because plenty of other convicted J6 defendants avoided jail time despite not being the subject of a conspiracy theory. This is evidently not a material factor for sentencing purposes.
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The contradiction is not between committing crimes and being unfairly accused of being a Federal agent, the connection is between the left being uniquely willing to forgive his crimes and being a Federal agent. Arguments as soldiers is done by the left too. If the left thought he was a bad guy, the left would demand that he be overcharged and would completely ignore any false accusations made about him, because that's how they behave for everyone else.
That would require that the left and the DOJ care in general about people being defamed. They don't.
Who on the left is willing to forgive Eps' crimes? Certainly not me. Citation on how the left acts for "everyone else?"
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