After pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge last fall, Epps was sentenced this week to a year of probation, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service, and ordered to pay $500 in fines.
Unlike many of the January 6 rioters, who now number 1,265 people charged by the FBI with a federal crime, Epps escaped a jail sentence for the charge of disorderly conduct. That jail escape comes after he famously predicted he would go to jail in a now-viral clip of him urging an attack inside the Capitol building.
Epps could have been sentenced up to a year in jail by Chief Judge James Boasberg.
In the eyes of Democrats and the liberal media, Trump supporters attempted an “insurrection” and a “coup” against the federal government three years ago this month, and the unsympathetic Left has concluded the Trump-supporting perpetrators deserve to rot in jail for their crimes.
According to updated FBI statistics, published this week on the third anniversary, 749 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received a sentence for the actions. Of that number, 467 have been sentenced to jail and 154 were sentenced to home detention.
‘I’ll probably go to jail for it’
In the weeks that followed Jan. 6, it’s not clear how Epps stood out among the other MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters but video footage from the night of January 5 suggests suspicions arose that very night when Epps urged others to break the law.
“I’m gonna put it out there,” Epps boastfully tells a crowd around him. “I’ll probably go to jail for it: Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol. Into the Capitol!”
“Noooo!” the crowd responds.
Appearing to reflect on his comment, Epps then adds, “Peacefully. Peacefully.”
By then, however, the crowd smelled a rat.
“Fed! Fed! Fed!” many in the crowd said, pointing to Epps.
Epps, however, has maintained that description is not true. He is now suing Fox News in a defamation suit that names former host Tucker Carlson.
Sandy Rios, a former radio show host for American Family Radio, has followed the criminal cases of many January 6 defendants and has compared their treatment to political prisoners. So she has little sympathy for Epps.
“Well, it's obvious that Ray Epps is getting favored treatment,” she complains. “So far as who he really is, that's still a mystery.”
It didn’t help Epps, either, that the distrusted news media which denounced the “insurrection” and its participants has sympathized with only one of them. Epps was featured in a sympathetic “60 Minutes” by a network that hates Trump and his supporters, and news headlines about his sentencing (pictured above) focused on the “conspiracy” about him and the FBI.
In a Washington Examiner news story in 2022, which was not sympathetic, the article points out the Feds were refusing to answer questions from Republicans about the number of agents and informants who were imbedded in the Capitol Hill crowd that day. Republicans were also asking about Epps, the story said, who had told the Democrat-run January 6 House Committee he was not an informant.
The Examiner story also points out Ray’s face was captured by the FBI days after January 6 and put on its “most wanted” list of rioters. He was soon identified by the Arizona Republic but his pictured remained on the FBI website for six months until it was suddenly removed in July 2021.
