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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.
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.
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.
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.
The actual acts undertaken by Epps as outlined that article are the exact reason why people believe he was being treated unusually. Remember that he said that people needed to go into the capitol the night before the speech, and he even quit the speech early to go make sure people could go into the capitol! There is a much more direct line from his actions to the breach of the capitol building than anything Trump did or said, and they actually are going after Trump for actions that were unequivocally less relevant to the breach of the capitol building than what Epps did. He was also high up in the ranks of the Oathkeepers, one of the groups involved - he's directly comparable to Enrique Tarrio, and the difference in sentencing is extremely stark.
I believe that a substantial amount were. This isn't a bizarre conspiracy theory or fact pulled out of my ass to justify my opinion, but based on the admission of several officials that there were a large number of informants and government workers in the crowd. I'm sure that some of these individuals were just lucky (or unlucky given they were involved in the process at all), but I would bet a significant amount of money that there are federal informants or government workers inside that 37%.
Did you read the opinion? Judge Boasberg (coincidentally the same judge who approved the faulty warrant that allowed surveillance of the Trump campaign) explicitly said that this was a material factor for sentencing purposes. I think he was lying, but that is his actual official position.
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