Ray Epps, who has credibly been accused of being a federal asset involved in the orchestrating of the unlawful activity on January 6th, 2021, has been given a significantly lighter sentence compared to most other J6 defendants.
As reported by Breitbart, the Arizona man was sentenced on Tuesday to just 12 months of probation after previously pleading guilty to one misdemeanor charge. As a result, he will not spend any time in jail and will not face any travel restrictions, but he must serve 100 hours of community service. Epps appeared in court by video as Washington D.C. judge James Boasberg handed down the sentence.
Epps has long been the focus of claims that federal assets were deployed undercover into the crowd of peaceful Trump supporters to agitate and lead to unlawful activity. Video filmed on the night before January 6th showed Epps, standing in the middle of a crowded D.C. street, yelling for everyone to “go into the Capitol” the following day during the counting of the electoral college votes from the 2020 election. Other Trump supporters around him immediately responded with chants of “fed, fed, fed.”
On January 6th, Epps was seen once again encouraging people to go inside the Capitol building. Despite numerous video evidence of him actively inciting people to do so, Epps long evaded capture or any other form of punishment from the federal government compared to other J6 prisoners. By contrast, Enrique Tarrio, leader of the conservative Proud Boys, was sentenced to over 20 years in prison despite not even being in D.C. that day. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the peaceful right-wing group Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy.”
The claims against Epps were further fueled when, despite Epps surrendering to the FBI just two days after the peaceful protests, the government chose not to prosecute him in 2021 due to “insufficient evidence” to charge him with a crime. Later, the New York Times wrote a long article that was overwhelmingly friendly towards Epps in defending him from criticism, a treatment not afforded to any other J6 prisoner by the Times or any other mainstream media outlet.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence of six months in prison for Epps, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon saying in a court filing that “even if Epps did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct.”
Epps’ attorneys mostly made references to the claims against Epps, denouncing them as conspiracy theories and claiming that Epps was forced into hiding due to the widespread scrutiny.
“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr. Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” said Epps’ attorney Edward Ungvarsky.
Epps pleaded guilty to one count of disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, which carried a maximum sentence of one year in prison.