(Ken Silva, Headline USA) J6 provocateur Ray Epps has been publicly defended by the New York Times, 60 Minutes and the Democrat-led Jan. 6th Commission.
Add one more Epps defender to that list: retired senior FBI official Steven D’Antuono, who oversaw the bureau’s controversial Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnap case before being moved to lead the Washington DC field office during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot.
According to an interview transcript of D’Antuono and the House Judiciary Committee released on Tuesday, the retired FBI official feels “absolutely awful” for Epps—the J6 provocateur seen on video encouraging other protestors to breach the Capitol.
D’Antuono said he’s never watched the footage of Epps provocative activities, but he nevertheless feels bad for him.
“I feel awful for Mr. Epps because he has been wrongly accused of being a [confidential human source] and I think it’s ruined his life,” D’Antuono told the committee.
“So it’s horrible. And, to my knowledge, I know nothing about Mr. Epps being a CHS for the Bureau.”
D’Antuono blamed the FBI’s lack of transparency for the allegations that Epps was an agent provacatuer. Epps was originally on the FBI’s Most Wanted list before being removed without explanation—fueling speculation that he was a protected asset.
“I feel absolutely awful for Mr. Epps that it came to that, and no one [in the FBI] was responding. And then all this rumor and innuendo was out there by media and everyone else that we could’ve maybe answered,” he said.
“I’m a realist too. A lot of people don’t believe what the FBI has to say nowadays anyway, so we could say until we’re blue in the face, ‘I’m saying right here that Ray Epps is not a CHS,’ and people are not going to believe me,” he added.
D’Antuono further said he didn’t know how many FBI informants were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He guessed that there were a “handful,” but said most of them would have been run through other field offices.
Epps is currently suing Fox News over former host Tucker Carlson’s reports that raise suspicions about him.
About 2.5 years after J6, Epps was finally charged on Monday with one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct.
His lawsuit said that the criminal charge against him disproves 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 hasn’t specified what aspect of the Fox/Carlson was disproven. 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.
Furthermore, the seminal reporting on Epps doesn’t accuse him of being an FBI informant specifically, but raises questions about whether he might have been working for another agency.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
