Another Tucker defamation victim sues
By 
[UPDATE: Rhodes was indicted! And, come to think of it, is now doing an 18-year federal bit!]
It was obvious that Fox’s cited reasons for firing Tucker Carlson were pretextural. One of the key texts, it seems increasingly likely, was that Tucker was becoming a huge financial liability for his partners. MAGA land, trying to gin up a false flag theory about 1/6, developed a bizarre fixation on a Trump supporter named Ray Epps, who had his life and business destroyed by these nutty conspiracy theories. Epps has now filed a major lawsuit:
Ray Epps, the man at the center of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Fox News and its former host Tucker Carlson of defamation for promoting a “fantastical story” that Mr. Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump and his supporters.
The complaint was filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox recently agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in a separate defamation case brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems to combat claims that the company had helped to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.
“Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” the complaint says. “It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.”
[…]
After the unfounded accusations about Mr. Epps were aired on Mr. Carlson’s show, they quickly spread to online communities of Trump supporters and to the political world as Republican members of Congress tried to link Mr. Epps to a fictitious conspiracy theory that he was involved in planning the Jan. 6 attack. They included Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, both of whom made Mr. Epps — a two-time Trump voter — a focus of concern at public hearings.
[…]
The publicity had damaging consequences for Mr. Epps and his wife, Robyn, who received numerous death threats and were forced to sell their five-acre ranch and wedding business in Arizona and move into a 350-square-foot mobile home parked at a remote trailer park in the mountains of Utah. Online retailers began selling T-shirts that said “Arrest Ray Epps.” Some people even recorded songs about him and posted them on YouTube, the complaint states, adding how he had been reduced “into a character in a cartoonish conspiracy theory.”
There are a few little problems with the theory that Epps was not indicted because he was a federal agent fomenting an attack on the Capitol to smear the very innocent supporter of multiparty democracy and the electoral process Donald Trump. Among these are that 1)there is no evidence whatsoever that Epps is or has ever been a federal agent, 2)his role in the attack appears to have been substantially inflated by the conspiracy nuts and 3)he says that he has been told that he will be indicted in any case:
Mr. Epps was in the Marine Corps but said under oath in his deposition before the Jan. 6 committee that he had otherwise never worked for law enforcement or spoke with anyone at various government agencies, including the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. Through his lawyer, Michael Teter, Mr. Epps demanded in March that Fox and Mr. Carlson retract its stories about him and his purported role in the Capitol riot and issue an on-air apology. Neither the network nor Mr. Carlson, whose prime-time show has since been canceled, responded.
“When Fox, through its on-air personalities and guests, told its audience that the 2020 election had been stolen, Epps was listening,” the complaint says. “He believed Fox. And when Epps kept hearing that Trump supporters should let their views be known on Jan. 6 in Washington D.C., Epps took that to heart.”
The conspiracy theories about Mr. Epps have lived on in large part because the Justice Department has never charged him for his actions on Jan. 6 and the night before. Mr. Epps can be seen on video encouraging demonstrators to march with him and enter the Capitol at one point. At another point, however, he pleads for restraint once it becomes clear the situation is turning violent. He also pushes past a police barricade into a restricted part of the Capitol grounds.
But in May, the lawsuit says, the Justice Department notified Mr. Epps that it was planning to file criminal charges against him related to his role in the Capitol attack. Details about the charges remain unknown, but the fact that they are being filed undermines the notion that Mr. Epps was being protected because of his role as a supposed covert agent, the suit says.
[…]
On several occasions, Mr. Carlson brought on to his show Darren Beattie, the proprietor of a right-wing website called Revolver News, whom the complaint describes as “the principal person driving the false story that Epps was a federal agent planted as a provocateur to trigger the Capitol violence on January 6th.”
Yes, that Darren Beattie!
Anyway, maybe a hole bunch of secret evidence against Epps will now be revealed, but my guess is that Uncle Rupe is going to be writing another big check here.