Ray Epps, the former Trump acolyte at the center of wild right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, is pushing back against the “absurdity” of podcaster Joe Rogan’s claim that he “clearly instigated” the Capitol riots and helped the federal government orchestrate a false flag.
During a broadcast of The Joe Rogan Experience last week, the conspiracy-peddling comic once again pushed the unfounded claim that Epps was an undercover agent for the FBI who purposely incited MAGA supporters to storm the Capitol in an effort to damage then-President Donald Trump.
“The Jan. 6 thing is bad, but also, the intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol Building. That’s a fact,” Rogan declared before invoking unfounded theories about Epps’ supposed involvement in ginning up violence.
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“I don’t know, but I do know that every other, I think that every other person who was involved in Jan. 6, who was involved in coordinating a break-in into the Capitol and then instigating people, they were all arrested,” he asserted. “This guy wasn’t. Not only that, but they were defending him in The New York Times, The Washington Post, all these different things saying Fox News has unjustly accused him of instigating when he clearly instigated, he did it on camera. I don’t know if he was a fed. I know a lot of people think he was a fed.”
Last month, Epps filed a defamation suit against Fox News, claiming that the conservative cable giant and former Fox News star Tucker Carlson “commenced a years-long campaign spreading falsehoods about” him and “destroyed” his life by making him a “scapegoat” for the Jan. 6 attack. Carlson, in particular, regularly insinuated on his primetime show that Epps was an informant for the feds who “helped stage-manage the insurrection.”
In a statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning, Epps’ attorney Michael Teter blasted Rogan for breathing more life into the groundless allegations that Carlson initially made popular on the right.
“Joe Rogan's recent comments show the staying power and consequences of Fox's and Tucker Carlson's lies about Ray Epps,” Teter said. “For years, Fox targeted Ray and spread falsehoods about him and Fox's viewers used the lies as a basis to harass and threaten Ray.”
He added: “The absurdity of the conspiracy theory does not stand in the way of it being spread and weaponized to harm Ray. If Mr. Rogan is truly interested in focusing on who instigated the attack on the Capitol, he would find more truth in looking at the mirror than he does in focusing on a wedding venue owner from Arizona.”
Rogan, who signed a $200-million contract with Spotify in 2020, has regularly pushed conspiracies that Epps was an “agent provocateur” and that the Capitol attacks were a false flag orchestrated by the federal government. On past podcasts, he’s said that the FBI was “manipulating those people” at the Capitol because they had a “vested interest in this going sideways” in order to disparage Trump.
The FBI has said that “Ray Epps has never been an FBI source or an FBI employee,” and staffers for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack said there is no evidence that Epps was involved in planning or engineering the riots.
Additionally, while Rogan has pointed to the lack of prosecution of Epps over his role in the Capitol attack as proof he is working for federal law enforcement, Epps revealed in his lawsuit that the Justice Department informed him in May that it will file criminal charges against him for his actions on Jan. 6.
Epps, a former member of the right-wing Oath Keppers militia who voted for Trump twice and believed the 2020 election was “rigged,” has said he was forced to sell his home and move to a remote trailer park due to the death threats he’s received over the conspiracy theory. He also blames Fox News’ peddling of election lies over Trump’s loss for pushing him to go to Washington, D.C., to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Reps for Rogan and Spotify did not respond to requests for comment.
