(DCWatchdog.com) – In a new headache for Fox News, a former Trump supporter involved in the January 6, 2021, events at the US Capitol is now suing the network over its former host Tucker Carlson’s claims that he was an undercover FBI agent.
The defamation lawsuit by Ray Epps accuses Carlson of broadcasting an “unfounded theory” that the former was an undercover federal agent who lured Trump supporters to breach the Capitol compound, The National Review reports.
Tucker Carlson was axed by Fox News in April, days after the conservative network agreed to pay nearly $800 million in a defamation lawsuit settlement to Dominion Voting Systems over fraud claims in the 2020 election.
Carlson was among the Fox anchors promoting such allegations. His legal relations with Fox are still being negotiated, as his contract with the network is valid until the end of 2024.
“Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” reads the complaint first reported by The New York Times.
“It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol,” it adds.
Epps is seen in a video from January 5, a day before the Capitol events, in which he urges Trump supporters to enter the Congress building the next day.
He hasn’t been prosecuted, unlike hundreds of other January 6 protesters. According to the FBI, that is because he cooperated with the investigation.
However, according to Tucker Carlson and other conservative pundits, Epps might have been spared because he was, in fact, an undercover agent who “helped stage-manage the insurrection.”
“Now we’ve asked Ray Epps on this show repeatedly to explain why he thinks he’s escaped prosecution, and we’ll ask him once again tonight, and we’ll keep asking because we think it is a very obvious and important question,” Carlson told Fox viewers in July 2022.
Epps, a former US Marine, filed his complaint with the Superior Court in Delaware, the same jurisdiction where Fox recently agreed to the Dominion Voting Systems settlement.
After receiving multiple death threats, he had to sell his ranch and wedding venue business in Arizona and move to a mobile home in a faraway part of Utah with his wife.
Ray Epps, a self-purported Trump supporter who was present at the Capitol when the January 6 riot occurred, filed a lawsuit accusing Fox News of defamation. | @ariblaff https://t.co/D135MnC8su
— National Review (@NRO) July 12, 2023
