Ray Epps, the only person who was captured on video actually telling people to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. 2021, has just been recommended for a six-month sentence, while others who entered the Capitol when police opened the doors for them and walked around for awhile taking selfies are facing years in prison. What’s going on here? The most obvious explanation is that Ray Epps is or was a fed, and a leader of efforts to fabricate a Jan. 6 “insurrection” in order to frame and destroy Donald Trump. But surely the leftist elites wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, would they?
The Daily Wire reported Tuesday that federal prosecutors have “requested” that Epps be given six months in prison for his role in the fictional “insurrection.” This recommendation of a slap on the wrist only comes after Epps avoided prison for two years while numerous others caught up in the Jan. 6 riot have languished in the D.C. gulag for three years now. Even more suspiciously, Epps became an establishment media darling, the subject of admiring profiles from the New York Times and 60 Minutes, even as these outlets treated everyone else involved in their sagging “insurrection” as Adolf Hitler incarnate.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you that Ray Epps is a government employee and a deep state agent provocateur, consider this. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who never told anyone to go into the Capitol, got an 18-year sentence for his role in the alleged “insurrection.” Ray Epps, meanwhile, has been recommended to serve six months, despite being captured on video on Jan. 5, 2021, saying, “I’m gonna put it out there. I’m probably gonna go to jail for it, okay?” He didn’t. “Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol. Into the Capitol.” The people around him in the video aren’t buying it and start chanting, “Fed! Fed! Fed!”
At another point, Epps says, “Tomorrow — I don’t even like to say it ‘cause I’ll be arrested…” He wasn’t, and no one has ever explained why not. Someone in the crowd responds, “So let’s not say it.” “We need to go —” Epps continues, and looking at the man who told him not to say it, insists, “I’ll say it. We need to go in to the Capitol.” Once again, his exhortation is received with derision among the supposed “insurrectionists” he was addressing.
Even that isn’t all. In yet another instance, Epps is caught on video saying, “We are going to the Capitol, where our problems are.” Pointing, he makes sure protesters know where to find the place: “It’s that direction. Please spread the word.” Epps is also on video whispering something to those who pushed down the barriers between the protesters and the Capitol just before they began breaking down the barriers; then he is seen running with them toward the Capitol.
It is not hard to imagine that if Epps were on the level, he would be in prison now and would be looking at many more years behind bars. Instead, he gets defended in the media and recommended for a six-month sentence. Even that sentence appears to be a face-saving gesture designed to quell the widespread suspicion that Epps was not a Trump supporter at all, and was there to make sure an “insurrection” happened. Instead, it is such a light sentence that it only adds fuel to such speculation.
It really isn’t that bad, however. Besides the six months, prosecutors also recommended a year of supervised release, in case the rascally Epps decided to gin up another “insurrection,” and a $500 fine. This came after Epps “pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds.” That’s right, not to “sedition” or “insurrection,” despite the fact that if anyone at all who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, deserved such a charge, it was Epps.
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Prosecutors insisted that the ridiculously light sentencing recommendation “protects the community, promotes respect for the law, and deters future crime by imposing restrictions on Epps’ liberty as a consequence of his behavior.” They justified its leniency by pointing to “his acceptance of responsibility for his crime, his efforts to deescalate conflicts between rioters and police officers, and his cooperation with the FBI and Congress.” He also has supposedly demonstrated “what appears to be sincere remorse” for his “damage to democracy.”
Oh, brother. As if that weren’t laying it on thick enough, prosecutors added that another reason for the light sentence was that the poor fellow had suffered the “widespread impact by the conspiracy theory that he was acting as a federal agent on January 6.” Poor old Epps! All this folderol, however, even as it is designed to impugn the credibility of Epps’ critics by labeling them conspiracy theorists, only provides more evidence that they’ve been right all along.
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