(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Justice Department did not mention that Ray Epps may have an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Pennsylvania when it filed its plea deal last month with the J6 provocateur, who was charged last month with one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct over his actions at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest.
The maximum sentence facing Epps is one year imprisonment, but DOJ prosecutors disclosed in their plea deal that they will only seek zero to six months because Epps lacks a criminal history.
“Based upon the information now available to this Office (including representations by the defense), your client has no criminal convictions,” prosecutors said. “Accordingly, your client is estimated to have 0 criminal history.”
While it might be true that Epps had zero criminal convictions, there’s likely an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Pennsylvania.
The warrant for Epps’s arrest was discovered by this reporter last year, and is detailed in a Sept. 1, 2022, article in The Libertarian Institute.
According to police and court records, Epps was arrested in Pennsylvania in 2015 for criminal trespassing.
A Pennsylvania State Police report states that on Nov. 21, 2015, at 9:12 a.m. “[Epps] entered the victim’s private roadway despite seeing signs and knowing he was not privileged to do so. [Pennsylvania trooper Richard Williams Jr.] had to arrive and tell the accused to leave the property.”
Epps apparently didn’t show up to his court date, leading a warrant to be issued for his arrest on Jan. 26, 2016.
At the time, his attorney, ex-FBI agent John Blischak, declined to comment on the matter.
Epps’ alleged victim, whose name is being withheld out of respect for her privacy, also declined to comment. Williams Jr., the trooper who arrested Epps, could not be reached for comment.
Since then, Epps has hired a new attorney, former Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Teter, who hasn’t responded to questions about the Pennsylvania charge.
It’s not clear when Epps is scheduled to be sentenced, as his case wasn’t available on the federal court website—the website said the URL to his docket is incorrect.
Epps is the controversial figure seen on camera on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, urging protestors to enter the Capitol. He initially appeared on the FBI’s wanted list in relation to the Capitol rioting, only to be removed in the summer of 2021 with no explanation.
Epps has been accused by some of being a government provocateur—a claim he has denied and filed a lawsuit over.
When he sued Fox News over its coverage of him in July, he disclosed that he expected to be charged for J6.
Epps claimed that the impending criminal charge will disprove the theory that he was a federal asset who encouraged Trump supporters to commit violence on Jan. 6.
“In May 2023, the Department of Justice notified Epps that it would seek to charge him criminally for events on January 6, 2021—two-and-a-half years later. The relentless attacks by Fox and [Tucker] Carlson and the resulting political pressure likely resulted in the criminal charges,” Epps said in the lawsuit.
“Although it is difficult to believe that the Department of Justice would have pursued this matter if Fox had not focused its likes on Epps, ultimately the criminal charges conclusively demonstrate the falsehood of the story that Mr. Carlson and Fox told about Epps.”
Epps didn’t specify what aspect of the Fox/Carlson story would be disproven if he’s charged with a misdemeanor for trespassing on Capitol grounds. Other FBI informants, such as Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, were charged in relation to J6, and it’s a common tactic for law enforcement to criminally charge informants to bolster their cover stories.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
