Ray Epps--International Man of Mystery

I continue my series discussing claims related to election fraud and the riot at the Capitol last year, which is part of a discussion I am having with an old friend via text. In the most recent exchange, my pal brought up a person I had not heard of before, but who seems to be figuring large in the right wing media-o-sphere at the moment: Ray Epps.

one question. answer why ray epps was never investigated by the fbi in spite of being caught on camera instigating the run on the capitol. most people said get lost.

I looked up Ray Epps on Snopes, and sent that to my friend. The Snopes article is only two days old, so this really is a very recent story that's going around. Snopes concludes:

Ray Epps is a retired Marine with connections to a far-right anti-government militia group who traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally in support of Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election had been stolen. While in D.C., Epps was filmed telling other Trump supporters to go “into” the U.S. Capitol “peacefully.” In another video, Epps is seen de-escalating a fight between police and protesters. 

There’s no evidence to indicate that Epps went into the Capitol himself or that he committed other criminal offenses. As of this writing, Epps has not been charged with any crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack.

My friend continued:

Inciting an insurrection is illegal. Just because the guy didn’t go into the capitol, allegedly, doesn’t preclude him from having broken other laws. I would say a more legitimate analysis would look at what the many other protesters were charged with. There are likely plenty of people charged that did less than what epps did. 

Being a member of Oathkeepers doesn’t preclude him from being a fed agent. The government likely has planted agents in militia-type group before 

Alright, a big issue here is that we are now talking about legally charging people with a crime, and I know from any number of cases that the legal meaning of a word may be different from its colloquial use. 

According to Suzanne Spalding (a lawyer) and Devi Nair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the law states that seditious conspiracy is to:

conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof. 

Notice, however, that the crime is "seditious conspiracy." Conspiracy is defined as:

An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal.  

Would you say that shouting in a room full of Trumpist yobbos is an agreement? I think it's a hard case to make, especially if, as my friend says, people mostly told him to pound sand. And the language of the law seems to be designed this way for a reason, to protect First Amendment activity. According to CSIS:

It is important to consider that federal law refers to “seditious conspiracy” as opposed to just “sedition.” There is the added burden of proof that an individual must actively be conspiring and taking steps toward a violent action against the government, not just making comments that seem to merely reflect that desire. This is to ensure that First Amendment activity is protected under the Constitution, and only actions that overtly demonstrate individuals’ plans to take dangerous steps toward overthrowing the United States’ constitutional government are charged.

Given that Epps seems to encourage people to go into the Capitol "peacefully," and since he is seen deescalating a confrontation between cops and protesters, it's perhaps not surprising that he has not been charged. Until there is evidence that he was in the Capitol, he deserves to live his life unmolested. It certainly doesn't mean that the FBI is "protecting" him any more than the FBI is "protecting" my friend. 

One further note before I go on: if Epps "incited an insurrection" and deserves to be arrested then Trump certainly does.  

Back to my discussion with my friend. He says:

the reality is it may or may not have been encouraged by feds. 

This is a weak version of the appeal to ignorance, in essence saying, "We don't know, but in the absence of evidence we assume it's true." But that's now how coming to conclusions works. My pal points out that the FBI has infiltrated white supremacist and militia groups before, and this is true, but unless the vast majority of the members of the Oath Keepers are known to be FBI, it makes no sense to assume that any individual is a fed. 

definitely lack of clear ROA (rules of engagement) by capitol police leadership, and a few knuckleheads that got caught up in the mania in the crowd. by and far 99.99% of the people there said fuck this and left. 

It looks like about an upper limit of 40,000 people showed up for the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, based in part on the 25,000 people who passed through Secret Service screening to attend. the low estimate of the number of people on the Capitol grounds illegally, who got there by beating their way past a police line, is about 2000. Suggesting that at least 1 in 20 participants ended up committing a crime that day, 3 orders of magnitude bigger than my friend seems to think. Some 700 hundred have been charged. 

you likely took the 1st article from a google search that placated what cognitive dissonance you have momentarily felt. Conveniently google placed that article at the top for you.

The first Google result I found was for a Ray Epps who was a former basketball player. I was pretty damned confused for a minute there. I teach about the Google algorithm (and other algorithms) in my first year seminar classes. I talk about the dangers of using services that feed you things that it thinks you want to over things that you need to hear. I know Google-Fu. My buddy then sent me a screenshot of his search from another website: 

This is the front page of [the] Quant search engine search of ray epps. Much different results. There are facts and views in those article that the snopes article naturally leaves out.

In fact, the first page of the Quant search first throws up a number of unintentionally hilarious, auto-generated T-shirt ideas based on my search:

After that, however, I do get the same list of articles/sources that my pal does. But--and this is important--I've literally never heard of almost any them. They have, from my perspective, no reputation, no authority. What are their standards of evidence? Do they have editors? What are their newsroom practices like? And when they are making an extraordinary claim, why should I take it seriously? From my POV, there seems to be no inherent reason to trust them.

So, let's click on a few links to see where my friend is getting his information from.

The first article I see is from the World Tribune and attributes unhelpfully to "Staff" "Who is Ray Epps and why has the FBI protected him?". No bias there. No siree.

And the basis for the conclusion that they've reached by the end of their headline, and I'm not making this up, is that some Republican badgered the Attorney General about him during a hearing, knowing full well that the AG can't comment on individual cases. That silence is not coverup; even if they weren't covering something up, he still wouldn't say anything about it. Also, the congresscritter seems to be concerned that the picture of Epps that was on a Most Wanted page had disappeared. But it's not like he's considered a top 10 criminal: his anonymous photo appears among hundreds of other anonymous people there at the Capitol. It would take Rain Man to notice that his photo had been taken down. This is an example of "anomaly hunting," which is common in conspiracy theories, paranormal investigations and other forms pseudo-research. The form is very similar to the argument from ignorance: "I don't understand something, therefore I understand that something nefarious is happening." No, you don't understand something so you don't understand something; you just can't insert a conclusion of the basis of nothing. 

Here's another poser that nobody seems to be asking: How could a group like the FBI be so adept at masterminding a coup but so inept that they'd post an image (and video) of one of their agents committing a crime? It's a classic, "They're omnipotent and also foolish" gambit that we see in conspiracy theories.

What about the next article in the Quant search results, Revolver? Welp, this is at the top
of their page:

Ah, a conspiracy theory site. The Deep State is not a thing. It's a phrase that started in Turkey to describe an entrenched military that actively slowed down reforms. It's now used to mean "any career employee of the government who does not instantly bend to the will of the executive." So it's a conspiracy theory site. Dismissed.

So, if a Quant web search is turning up crummy results, maybe we should go over and click the News tab... Oh dear:

To my good friend who said that Google "conveniently" put the Snopes article at the top for me, I say: