Ray Epps, accused of being J6 FBI informant by some conservatives, sentenced to one-year probation

An Arizona man accused by some conservatives of being an FBI plant in the Jan 6. Capitol riot was sentenced Tuesday to one-year probation for his participation in the incident. 

The rioter, 62-year-old Ray Epps, was sentenced to probation in a deal with federal prosecutors, after pleading guilty in September to a single charge of engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, according to The Hill newspaper.

Epps repeatedly denied he was a government informant or that he encouraged people to breach the Capitol to get them in trouble. According to NBC News, in testimony before the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, Epps said that he wasn’t a federal agent and wasn't working for the CIA, the National Security Agency or the Metropolitan Police Department. No evidence has emerged to show Epps was working with the government or at its behest that day. And federal prosecutors say Epps was never a government employee or agent beyond serving in the  Marines four decades ago.

He was also ordered to pay $500 in restitution and serve 100 hours of community service. 

Nonetheless, prosecutors had requested six months in prison for Epps, who joined in a group effort on Jan. 6, 2021, to shove past police officers, as Congress attempted to certify Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 presidential win, the Hill reported.

“Even if Epps did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct,” the government said in a sentencing memo.  

However, he also turned himself in two days after the riot and tried to deescalate the confrontations between law enforcement and rioters.

The theory that Epps was an FBI informant was fueled by a video recorded a day before the riot in which he is seen talking about going to the Capitol the next day and images of him whispering with another rioter, who was later accused of being the first to breach police barricades.

Epps sued Fox News this past summer, alleging the network spread “destructive conspiracy theories” about him and his actions on Jan. 6. In a motion to dismiss the complaint filed last August, according to The Washington Post, Fox lawyers argued that its on-air hosts were entitled to raise questions about why the man, Ray Epps, was not arrested — a discussion that is “exactly what the First Amendment protects.”