After a grueling day for Feds who testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP lawmakers and others questioned why the government wouldn’t answer the simplest of questions about events leading up to the Jan. 6 revolt at the US Capitol.
Speculation centered largely around Ray Epps, an Arizona man whose viral video near the protest at one time landed him on the FBI’s most wanted list.
“It’s been clear for awhile now that the Department of Justice probably had some role in the events of Jan. 6—it’s obvious,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday about the sudden silent treatment concerning Epps, according to the Gateway Pundit.
“And after hearings on Capitol Hill today, it became even clearer,” added Carlson, who released a three-part documentary in November touching on the apparent cover-up.
Instead of supplying answers, though, the House’s partisan Jan. 6 commission appeared to lay cover for Epps, claiming to have secretly interviewed him and found nothing to be concerned about.
The Committee has interviewed Epps. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on Jan 5th or 6th or at any other time, & that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) January 11, 2022
But the committee’s carefully-worded denial appeared to raise more questions than it answered.
Some keen observers noted that the use of “law enforcement” as a qualifying descriptor meant very little, given the litany of deep-state agencies that fall under the purview of other departments.
For example, the State Department oversees the CIA and the Treasury Department runs the IRS, which also has its own enforcement arm. Even the US Postal Service has waded, alarmingly, into its own covert operations, supported by the department of Homeland Security.
Notice they were careful to confine his non-fed employment to law enforcement agencies. CIA isn’t a law enforcement agency. Neither is IRS or any number of alphabet soups who work with Congress to undermine the executive all the time. This makes his involvement even more curious.
— Publius Maximus (@MaximusPublius) January 11, 2022
Republicans have suspected that Epps was part of a false-flag effort organized by the deep state to mobilize mostly-peaceful supporters of then-President Donald Trump to attack the Capitol.
Video first brought to public notice in October by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., showed Epps coaching protestors in the days before the event and then directing them toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the immediate aftermath, Epps landed on the FBI’s most wanted list. However, he mysteriously vanished off the list in July 2021.
During the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Tuesday, GOP senators raised the stakes by demanding answers from assistant FBI directors Jill Sanborn and Matthew Olsen.
However, both proceeded to stonewall their interrogators.
Sanborn: I can’t answer.
Cruz shows Epps was on FBI most wanted list. Then he disappeared from list. Epps has not been charged.
Credit @DarrenJBeattie
Cruz: Did federal agents or those in service to federal agents actively encourage violent and criminal conduct on January 6?
— Julie Kelly ?? (@julie_kelly2) January 11, 2022
Carlson was among those who remained incredulous following the testimony.
“They really expect you to believe that,” he said on his Tuesday night show. “So, the DOJ knows nothing about Ray Epps—the guy on the most wanted list. Right…”
In response, corrupt lawmakers and their media allies waged an all-out effort to discredit the Ray Epps theories.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois—one of two RINOs appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to serve on the J6 Commission—suggested the claims about Epps were simply too implausible to be true.
4) He didn’t enter the Capitol on Jan 6, and was removed from the most wanted list because apparently he broke no laws. I’m pretty sure the FBI wouldn’t be dumb enough to put their own agent on a wanted list. Ray Epps has cooperated with the Jan 6 committee and we thank him
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) January 11, 2022
“I’m pretty sure the FBI wouldn’t be dumb enough to put their own agent on a wanted list,” claimed Kinzinger via Twitter. “Ray Epps has cooperated with the Jan 6 committee and we thank him.”
The Illinois congressman—who plans to retire rather than face the wrath of GOP voters in the upcoming midterm elections—also asserted that Epps must have done nothing wrong.
All the same, conservative skeptics called on the J6 committee to release the transcripts of its interrogation.
Will Select Cmte release transcript of Epps testimony? Will it pursue q as to why someone on tape calling for people to go into Capitol multiple times in an event compared to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Civil War hasn’t been charged when 725 others have been? Why he was pulled from list? https://t.co/PvtrAI1QqB
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) January 11, 2022
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
