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Further info reveals Trump’s mob planned for hostage-taking and assassinations

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https://www.peoplesworld.org/articl...lanned-for-hostage-taking-and-assassinations/
Further info reveals Trump’s mob planned for hostage-taking and assassinations
January 11, 2021 11:46 AM CST BY JAY REEVES, LISA MASCARO AND CALVIN WOODWARD

6ovzp0.jpg


WASHINGTON (AP)—Under battle flags bearing Donald Trump’s name, the Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.

“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, too. They hunted any and all lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been stashed in the vicinity.

Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders—Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.

This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.

That revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who briefly took over proceedings in the House chamber as the mob closed in Wednesday, and Pelosi was spirited to safer quarters moments before everything went haywire.

“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”

“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically home-grown fascism, out of control.”

Pelosi said Sunday “the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and direction. And the direction was to go get people.” She did not elaborate on that point in a ”60 Minutes” interview on CBS.

The scenes of rage, violence, and agony are so vast that the whole of it may still be beyond comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos emerging from the scene, much of it from gloating insurrectionists themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos that was around them, the contours of the uprising are increasingly coming into relief.

The staging

The mob got stirring encouragement from Trump and more explicit marching orders from the president’s men.

“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Criminals pardoned by Trump, among them Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds they were fighting a battle between good and evil. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched-fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol as he pulled up to press his challenge of the election results.

The crowd was pumped. Until a little after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm for the final minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who was serving his ceremonial role presiding over the process.

Both men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to subvert the election won by Biden. That placed them high among the insurrectionists’ targets, no different in the minds of the mob from the “socialists.”

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things spiraled out of control in what lawmakers call the “People’s House.”

Far-right social media users had openly hinted for weeks that chaos would erupt at the Capitol when Congress convened to certify the election results. As the attack unfolded, they urged followers to “trust the plan” and “hold the line.” Just what the plan might have been is central to the investigation.

The FBI is investigating whether some of the attackers intended to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Authorities are particularly focused on why some in the mob were seen carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs and had apparently accessed areas of the Capitol generally difficult for the public to locate.

The Assault

Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged into police and metal barricades outside the building, shoving and hitting officers in their way. The assault quickly pushed through the vastly outnumbered police line; officers ran down one man and pummeled him.

In the melee outside, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a fire extinguisher at the helmeted head of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers, too.

The identity of the officer could not immediately be confirmed. But Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the next night; officials say he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol Police sent an alert telling workers in a House office building to head to underground transportation tunnels that criss-cross the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the lockdown of the Capitol. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors,” said the email blast. “If you are outside, seek cover.”

At 2:15 p.m., the Senate recessed its Electoral College debate and a voice was heard over the chamber’s audio system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the House chamber were barricaded and lawmakers inside it were told they may need to duck under their chairs or relocate to cloakrooms off the House floor because the mob has breached the Capitol Rotunda.

Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the House chamber, Capitol Police pulled Pelosi away from the podium, she told “60 Minutes.”

“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to leave.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ They said, ‘No, you must leave.’” So she did.

At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House chamber prepared to be evacuated, a gunshot was heard from right outside, in the Speaker’s Lobby on the other side of the barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag like a cape, was shot to death on camera as insurrectionists railed, her blood pooling on the white marble floor.

The Air Force veteran from California had climbed through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby before a police officer’s gunshot felled her.

Back in the House chamber, a woman in the balcony was seen and heard screaming. Why she was doing that only became clear later when video circulated. She was screaming a prayer.

Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been cowering during the onslaught, terror etched into their faces, had been taken from the chamber and gallery to a secure room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms of her suite.

“The staff went under the table, barricaded the door, turned out the lights, and were silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”

On the Senate side, Capitol Police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and reporters and any nearby senators into the chamber and locked it down. At one point about 200 people were inside; an officer armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and the Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone inside to a secure location, the Senate parliamentary staff scooping up the boxes holding the Electoral Collage certificates.

Although the Capitol’s attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, they appeared in some cases to be surprised that they had actually made it in.

When they breached the abandoned Senate chamber, they milled around, rummaged through papers, sat at desks, and took videos and pictures. One of them climbed to the dais and yelled, “Trump won that election!” Two others were photographed carrying flex cuffs typically used for mass arrests.

But outside the chamber, the mob’s hunt was still on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard yelling.

That question could have also applied to reinforcements—where were they?

At about 5:30 p.m., once the National Guard had arrived to supplement the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-on effort began to get the attackers out.

Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements started using tear gas in a coordinated fashion to get people moving toward the door, then combed the halls for stragglers. As darkness fell, they pushed the mob farther out onto the plaza and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs, and percussion grenades.

At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people hunkered down in two nearby congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone must.”

Within the hour, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers affirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shell-shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.
 
https://www.peoplesworld.org/articl...lanned-for-hostage-taking-and-assassinations/
Further info reveals Trump’s mob planned for hostage-taking and assassinations
January 11, 2021 11:46 AM CST BY JAY REEVES, LISA MASCARO AND CALVIN WOODWARD

6ovzp0.jpg


WASHINGTON (AP)—Under battle flags bearing Donald Trump’s name, the Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.

“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, too. They hunted any and all lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been stashed in the vicinity.

Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders—Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.

This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.

That revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who briefly took over proceedings in the House chamber as the mob closed in Wednesday, and Pelosi was spirited to safer quarters moments before everything went haywire.

“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”

“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically home-grown fascism, out of control.”

Pelosi said Sunday “the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and direction. And the direction was to go get people.” She did not elaborate on that point in a ”60 Minutes” interview on CBS.

The scenes of rage, violence, and agony are so vast that the whole of it may still be beyond comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos emerging from the scene, much of it from gloating insurrectionists themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos that was around them, the contours of the uprising are increasingly coming into relief.

The staging

The mob got stirring encouragement from Trump and more explicit marching orders from the president’s men.

“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Criminals pardoned by Trump, among them Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds they were fighting a battle between good and evil. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched-fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol as he pulled up to press his challenge of the election results.

The crowd was pumped. Until a little after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm for the final minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who was serving his ceremonial role presiding over the process.

Both men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to subvert the election won by Biden. That placed them high among the insurrectionists’ targets, no different in the minds of the mob from the “socialists.”

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things spiraled out of control in what lawmakers call the “People’s House.”

Far-right social media users had openly hinted for weeks that chaos would erupt at the Capitol when Congress convened to certify the election results. As the attack unfolded, they urged followers to “trust the plan” and “hold the line.” Just what the plan might have been is central to the investigation.

The FBI is investigating whether some of the attackers intended to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Authorities are particularly focused on why some in the mob were seen carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs and had apparently accessed areas of the Capitol generally difficult for the public to locate.

The Assault

Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged into police and metal barricades outside the building, shoving and hitting officers in their way. The assault quickly pushed through the vastly outnumbered police line; officers ran down one man and pummeled him.

In the melee outside, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a fire extinguisher at the helmeted head of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers, too.

The identity of the officer could not immediately be confirmed. But Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the next night; officials say he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol Police sent an alert telling workers in a House office building to head to underground transportation tunnels that criss-cross the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the lockdown of the Capitol. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors,” said the email blast. “If you are outside, seek cover.”

At 2:15 p.m., the Senate recessed its Electoral College debate and a voice was heard over the chamber’s audio system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the House chamber were barricaded and lawmakers inside it were told they may need to duck under their chairs or relocate to cloakrooms off the House floor because the mob has breached the Capitol Rotunda.

Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the House chamber, Capitol Police pulled Pelosi away from the podium, she told “60 Minutes.”

“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to leave.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ They said, ‘No, you must leave.’” So she did.

At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House chamber prepared to be evacuated, a gunshot was heard from right outside, in the Speaker’s Lobby on the other side of the barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag like a cape, was shot to death on camera as insurrectionists railed, her blood pooling on the white marble floor.

The Air Force veteran from California had climbed through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby before a police officer’s gunshot felled her.

Back in the House chamber, a woman in the balcony was seen and heard screaming. Why she was doing that only became clear later when video circulated. She was screaming a prayer.

Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been cowering during the onslaught, terror etched into their faces, had been taken from the chamber and gallery to a secure room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms of her suite.

“The staff went under the table, barricaded the door, turned out the lights, and were silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”

On the Senate side, Capitol Police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and reporters and any nearby senators into the chamber and locked it down. At one point about 200 people were inside; an officer armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and the Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone inside to a secure location, the Senate parliamentary staff scooping up the boxes holding the Electoral Collage certificates.

Although the Capitol’s attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, they appeared in some cases to be surprised that they had actually made it in.

When they breached the abandoned Senate chamber, they milled around, rummaged through papers, sat at desks, and took videos and pictures. One of them climbed to the dais and yelled, “Trump won that election!” Two others were photographed carrying flex cuffs typically used for mass arrests.

But outside the chamber, the mob’s hunt was still on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard yelling.

That question could have also applied to reinforcements—where were they?

At about 5:30 p.m., once the National Guard had arrived to supplement the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-on effort began to get the attackers out.

Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements started using tear gas in a coordinated fashion to get people moving toward the door, then combed the halls for stragglers. As darkness fell, they pushed the mob farther out onto the plaza and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs, and percussion grenades.

At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people hunkered down in two nearby congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone must.”

Within the hour, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers affirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shell-shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.

donald-trump-laughing.gif
 
https://www.peoplesworld.org/articl...lanned-for-hostage-taking-and-assassinations/
Further info reveals Trump’s mob planned for hostage-taking and assassinations
January 11, 2021 11:46 AM CST BY JAY REEVES, LISA MASCARO AND CALVIN WOODWARD

6ovzp0.jpg


WASHINGTON (AP)—Under battle flags bearing Donald Trump’s name, the Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.

“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, too. They hunted any and all lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been stashed in the vicinity.

Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders—Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.

This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.

That revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who briefly took over proceedings in the House chamber as the mob closed in Wednesday, and Pelosi was spirited to safer quarters moments before everything went haywire.

“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”

“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically home-grown fascism, out of control.”

Pelosi said Sunday “the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and direction. And the direction was to go get people.” She did not elaborate on that point in a ”60 Minutes” interview on CBS.

The scenes of rage, violence, and agony are so vast that the whole of it may still be beyond comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos emerging from the scene, much of it from gloating insurrectionists themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos that was around them, the contours of the uprising are increasingly coming into relief.

The staging

The mob got stirring encouragement from Trump and more explicit marching orders from the president’s men.

“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Criminals pardoned by Trump, among them Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds they were fighting a battle between good and evil. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched-fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol as he pulled up to press his challenge of the election results.

The crowd was pumped. Until a little after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm for the final minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who was serving his ceremonial role presiding over the process.

Both men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to subvert the election won by Biden. That placed them high among the insurrectionists’ targets, no different in the minds of the mob from the “socialists.”

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things spiraled out of control in what lawmakers call the “People’s House.”

Far-right social media users had openly hinted for weeks that chaos would erupt at the Capitol when Congress convened to certify the election results. As the attack unfolded, they urged followers to “trust the plan” and “hold the line.” Just what the plan might have been is central to the investigation.

The FBI is investigating whether some of the attackers intended to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Authorities are particularly focused on why some in the mob were seen carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs and had apparently accessed areas of the Capitol generally difficult for the public to locate.

The Assault

Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged into police and metal barricades outside the building, shoving and hitting officers in their way. The assault quickly pushed through the vastly outnumbered police line; officers ran down one man and pummeled him.

In the melee outside, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a fire extinguisher at the helmeted head of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers, too.

The identity of the officer could not immediately be confirmed. But Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the next night; officials say he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol Police sent an alert telling workers in a House office building to head to underground transportation tunnels that criss-cross the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the lockdown of the Capitol. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors,” said the email blast. “If you are outside, seek cover.”

At 2:15 p.m., the Senate recessed its Electoral College debate and a voice was heard over the chamber’s audio system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the House chamber were barricaded and lawmakers inside it were told they may need to duck under their chairs or relocate to cloakrooms off the House floor because the mob has breached the Capitol Rotunda.

Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the House chamber, Capitol Police pulled Pelosi away from the podium, she told “60 Minutes.”

“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to leave.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ They said, ‘No, you must leave.’” So she did.

At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House chamber prepared to be evacuated, a gunshot was heard from right outside, in the Speaker’s Lobby on the other side of the barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag like a cape, was shot to death on camera as insurrectionists railed, her blood pooling on the white marble floor.

The Air Force veteran from California had climbed through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby before a police officer’s gunshot felled her.

Back in the House chamber, a woman in the balcony was seen and heard screaming. Why she was doing that only became clear later when video circulated. She was screaming a prayer.

Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been cowering during the onslaught, terror etched into their faces, had been taken from the chamber and gallery to a secure room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms of her suite.

“The staff went under the table, barricaded the door, turned out the lights, and were silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”

On the Senate side, Capitol Police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and reporters and any nearby senators into the chamber and locked it down. At one point about 200 people were inside; an officer armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and the Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone inside to a secure location, the Senate parliamentary staff scooping up the boxes holding the Electoral Collage certificates.

Although the Capitol’s attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, they appeared in some cases to be surprised that they had actually made it in.

When they breached the abandoned Senate chamber, they milled around, rummaged through papers, sat at desks, and took videos and pictures. One of them climbed to the dais and yelled, “Trump won that election!” Two others were photographed carrying flex cuffs typically used for mass arrests.

But outside the chamber, the mob’s hunt was still on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard yelling.

That question could have also applied to reinforcements—where were they?

At about 5:30 p.m., once the National Guard had arrived to supplement the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-on effort began to get the attackers out.

Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements started using tear gas in a coordinated fashion to get people moving toward the door, then combed the halls for stragglers. As darkness fell, they pushed the mob farther out onto the plaza and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs, and percussion grenades.

At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people hunkered down in two nearby congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone must.”

Within the hour, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers affirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shell-shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.
 


https://www.factcheck.org/2022/01/jan-6-conspiracy-theory-centers-on-baseless-claim-about-ray-epps/

Quick Take​

James Ray Epps was at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. But there is no evidence that he was an FBI plant assigned to instigate the riot, as a conspiracy theory — embraced by at least two members of Congress — claims. There is evidence, however, that Epps once held a leadership role in the Oath Keepers, some of whose members have been charged in the attack.

Full Story​

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump caused a deadly riot as they tried to stop the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. But some high-profile conservatives have been promoting a conspiracy theory that the violence was, instead, the result of a secret government plot.


At the center of the conspiracy theory is James Ray Epps, 60, who owns a wedding venue outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

The FBI added Epps’ picture on Jan. 8 to a list, shared on Twitter, of those it sought for more information about the riot.

On Jan. 11, Epps told the Arizona Republic that he had been there.

Videos on social media from Jan. 5 and 6 also appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C. In one widely viewed video from the night of Jan. 5, Epps tells a crowd, “In fact tomorrow … we need to go into the Capitol.”

When asked about that clip by the Arizona newspaper, Epps said, “The only thing that meant is we would go in the doors like everyone else. It was totally, totally wrong the way they went in.”

A video clip from Jan. 6 shows him near the Capitol as a mob breaks through a police barrier.

These videos and others have been highlighted by Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter, on the right-wing website Revolver. Beattie was fired from his job at the White House in 2018 after his appearance at a conference with a white supremacist two years earlier came to light. He now posts his writing on Revolver and was recently featured in Tucker Carlson’s series about the Jan. 6 riot that aired on Fox News’ streaming service.

Revolver has published two lengthy posts on Epps. The first — headlined, “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol” — was posted on Oct. 25. The second — “Meet Ray Epps, Part 2: Damning New Details Emerge Exposing Massive Web Of Unindicted Operators At The Heart Of January 6” — was posted on Dec. 18.

The posts each dissect about a half-dozen video clips that appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 or 6 — along with videos and photos showing other people in the crowd near the Capitol who Beattie’s posts claim are linked to Epps. Both posts focus on the fact that the FBI removed Epps’ picture from its wanted list after about six months and suggest that the FBI did this in an effort to cover up something nefarious.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene cited the most recent Revolver post in her appearance on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s Dec. 31 podcast, in which Greene and Kirk agreed that the removal of Epps’ picture most likely meant that he was an undercover FBI agent.

Kirk described the inclusion of the picture and its later removal as a “right hand, left hand” issue, meaning that the FBI’s right hand didn’t know what its left hand was doing. He explained that because the operation was so big, the FBI member who posted the picture didn’t know Epps was an agent and someone else in the FBI who did know removed the picture six months later.

“Well, if you’re working undercover, everybody can’t know who you are,” Greene added.

She and Rep. Matt Gaetz also cited the story and showed several videos that were featured in it at a press conference they held Jan. 6 on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. The two Republicans announced the event after Trump canceled his press conference scheduled for that day.

“We are here to expose the truth, to ask key questions about what happened on Jan. 6 — who animated the violence, the extent to which the federal government may have been involved,” Gaetz said. “We know this — Jan. 6 last year wasn’t an insurrection. No one’s been charged with insurrection. No one has been charged with treason. But it very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

The most recent Revolver post used the same phrase. It said, “If Ray Epps is a Fed, the ‘Insurrection’ becomes the ‘Fedsurrection’ in one fell swoop.”

But neither Greene nor Gaetz produced evidence that Epps works for the federal government. And the fact that his picture was removed from the FBI’s wanted list without having charges filed against him could mean any number of things, two legal experts told us.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol disclosed in a Jan. 11 tweet that it has interviewed Epps, who “informed us 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.”

Investigation Is a ‘Work in Progress’​

If the FBI removes a picture, it means its agents no longer need the public’s assistance in identifying him, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who was an advisor to former FBI Director James B. Comey, told us in a phone interview.

There are many reasons that the FBI would remove Epps’ photo without filing charges during an ongoing investigation, Richman said, including that he may have spoken to investigators and clarified his role or that he is cooperating with investigators and may implicate others.

“It’s very much a work in progress from the government’s perspective,” said Richman, who also was a consultant to the Department of Justice.

It’s worth noting that Epps’ picture isn’t the only one the FBI has removed. The bureau has also removed photos of individuals numbered 310, 311 and 312, for example. In other cases, the FBI has labeled those in the pictures as having been arrested — individual number 313 is an example of that.

The most common charge for those arrested following Jan. 6 is entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, so it’s also noteworthy that none of the videos included in Revolver’s posts show Epps inside the Capitol building. In fact, two of them appear to show Epps trying to mitigate confrontation between protesters and police outside.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney who co-chaired the attorney general’s advisory committee’s terrorism and national security subcommittee, told us something similar to Richman in an email.

“It is quite possible that insufficient evidence exists to charge him with a crime, either because his conduct did not amount to criminal behavior or the facts cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “It could also be that he has agreed to cooperate, and so any charges are being deferred until prosecutors are able to assess the value of his cooperation.”

McQuade also noted that inciting violence at a protest would violate the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide, which, she said, “prohibits the FBI from interfering with First Amendment protected activities.”

“It is always possible that an individual agent has violated a policy,” McQuade said, but that agent would be guilty of misconduct if he incited violence and the bureau would be guilty of misconduct if it if it planted an agent to incite violence.

We asked the FBI why Epps’ photo had been removed, but a spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment.

At an Oct. 21 hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, told Attorney General Merrick Garland, “There’s a concern that there were agents of the government, or assets of the government, present on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 during the protests.” He then showed video of Epps and noted that he hadn’t been charged.

Garland responded, “As I said at the outset, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not comment on pending investigations.”

We asked the Justice Department if it would be able to comment at this point, but we didn’t get a response.

We also reached out to Epps by phone and email, but didn’t hear back.

But Massie’s suggestion has been echoed by others, including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who has twice posted a video to social media calling the theory that Epps is a federal agent or asset “credible.”

Onetime Leader of Arizona Oath Keepers​

We can’t say exactly what role Epps played during the riot or what he may have told investigators afterward. But this is what we do know about him from publicly available information:

Epps and his wife bought property in Arizona in 2010, according to records from the Maricopa County Assessor’s office. Epps has two limited liability companies registered at that address — one is called Patriot Holdings and the other is called Rocking R Farms. Both were formed in 2011.

The couple first tried farming at the property and then switched to hosting weddings and events in 2019, according to their website for the business.

A reporter for the British newspaper the Daily Mail recently went to the property, but Epps declined to comment on the conspiracy theory. Epps had told the Arizona Republic in its Jan. 11, 2021, story that he had been advised by a lawyer not to comment. We weren’t able to find any public comments from Epps after that story ran.

In photos from the Daily Mail story, Epps is wearing a Marines cap and the first Revolver post says that he served in that branch of the military. A spokesman for the Marines confirmed to us that there is a service record for Epps that matches his name and birthdate, which we got from a Pennsylvania arrest record for trespassing in 2015.

The website for his wedding business says that he spent most of his career in construction.

Epps has also been involved with the Oath Keepers, an organization founded in 2009 that describes itself as defending the U.S. Constitution and says on its website that members “will not obey” orders they deem to be unconstitutional.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have each classified the Oath Keepers as an anti-government extremist organization.

Members of the Oath Keepers have been charged in what prosecutors allege was a wide-ranging conspiracy to breach the Capitol and stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

The organization’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, hasn’t been criminally charged, and a lawyer for one of the defendants in the conspiracy case told the judge in December that the uncertainty over whether or not he will be is hampering her ability to plan for trial.

Update, Jan. 13: On Jan. 13, the Justice Department announced seditious conspiracy charges against Rhodes and 10 members of the Oath Keepers.

The congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack subpoenaed Rhodes on Nov. 23, and he was also named in a civil suit brought by seven officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Epps hasn’t been charged with any crimes relating to the riot and we don’t know if he is currently a member of the organization. But in 2011 he was pictured with Rhodes and identified as president of the Oath Keepers’ Arizona chapter on a website called Freedom’s Phoenix. He was also identified as the president of that chapter in a post on the Oath Keepers’ website that year.

Again, we asked him by email about his ties to the group and whether he is currently a member. But he didn’t respond.

So, from what’s publicly available, it appears that Epps is the owner of a wedding venue in Arizona who has been, at least at one point, involved with a group that includes some members who have been charged with conspiring to impede the counting of the electoral votes. We could find no evidence that he has worked for the federal government, but we’ll update this story if more information emerges.

Update, July 14: The New York Times interviewed Epps and reported new information about the timeline for his cooperation with the government. Epps learned from a family member on Jan. 8, 2021, that the FBI was looking for him, according to the Times’ article. “He said he immediately called the bureau’s National Threat Operations Center,” it said, “and his phone records show that he spoke to agents there for nearly an hour.”

The Times also said Epps’ account is supported by transcripts it reviewed of his phone call and a March 2021 discussion Epps had with federal agents.

He told the newspaper that he and his wife have faced death threats over “lies” and that they had to sell their business and their home and move to a new location. They are seeking a lawyer to file defamation suits against people who pushed this conspiracy theory.

Correction, Jan. 13: Matt Walsh hosts a podcast for the Daily Wire. We misidentified the name of the news outlet in our original story.

Update, Jan. 12: An earlier version of this story said the Marines had no record of Epps serving in that branch of the military. After we published our story, a spokesman for the Marines told us he had initially searched for the wrong name but then found a service record for Epps after conducting another search with the correct name. We have updated our story to reflect that.

Update, Jan. 11: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol posted its tweet disclosing its interview with Epps shortly after we posted this story. We’ve added it.
 
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/01/jan-6-conspiracy-theory-centers-on-baseless-claim-about-ray-epps/

Quick Take​

James Ray Epps was at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. But there is no evidence that he was an FBI plant assigned to instigate the riot, as a conspiracy theory — embraced by at least two members of Congress — claims. There is evidence, however, that Epps once held a leadership role in the Oath Keepers, some of whose members have been charged in the attack.

Full Story​

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump caused a deadly riot as they tried to stop the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. But some high-profile conservatives have been promoting a conspiracy theory that the violence was, instead, the result of a secret government plot.


At the center of the conspiracy theory is James Ray Epps, 60, who owns a wedding venue outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

The FBI added Epps’ picture on Jan. 8 to a list, shared on Twitter, of those it sought for more information about the riot.

On Jan. 11, Epps told the Arizona Republic that he had been there.

Videos on social media from Jan. 5 and 6 also appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C. In one widely viewed video from the night of Jan. 5, Epps tells a crowd, “In fact tomorrow … we need to go into the Capitol.”

When asked about that clip by the Arizona newspaper, Epps said, “The only thing that meant is we would go in the doors like everyone else. It was totally, totally wrong the way they went in.”

A video clip from Jan. 6 shows him near the Capitol as a mob breaks through a police barrier.

These videos and others have been highlighted by Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter, on the right-wing website Revolver. Beattie was fired from his job at the White House in 2018 after his appearance at a conference with a white supremacist two years earlier came to light. He now posts his writing on Revolver and was recently featured in Tucker Carlson’s series about the Jan. 6 riot that aired on Fox News’ streaming service.

Revolver has published two lengthy posts on Epps. The first — headlined, “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol” — was posted on Oct. 25. The second — “Meet Ray Epps, Part 2: Damning New Details Emerge Exposing Massive Web Of Unindicted Operators At The Heart Of January 6” — was posted on Dec. 18.

The posts each dissect about a half-dozen video clips that appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 or 6 — along with videos and photos showing other people in the crowd near the Capitol who Beattie’s posts claim are linked to Epps. Both posts focus on the fact that the FBI removed Epps’ picture from its wanted list after about six months and suggest that the FBI did this in an effort to cover up something nefarious.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene cited the most recent Revolver post in her appearance on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s Dec. 31 podcast, in which Greene and Kirk agreed that the removal of Epps’ picture most likely meant that he was an undercover FBI agent.

Kirk described the inclusion of the picture and its later removal as a “right hand, left hand” issue, meaning that the FBI’s right hand didn’t know what its left hand was doing. He explained that because the operation was so big, the FBI member who posted the picture didn’t know Epps was an agent and someone else in the FBI who did know removed the picture six months later.

“Well, if you’re working undercover, everybody can’t know who you are,” Greene added.

She and Rep. Matt Gaetz also cited the story and showed several videos that were featured in it at a press conference they held Jan. 6 on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. The two Republicans announced the event after Trump canceled his press conference scheduled for that day.

“We are here to expose the truth, to ask key questions about what happened on Jan. 6 — who animated the violence, the extent to which the federal government may have been involved,” Gaetz said. “We know this — Jan. 6 last year wasn’t an insurrection. No one’s been charged with insurrection. No one has been charged with treason. But it very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

The most recent Revolver post used the same phrase. It said, “If Ray Epps is a Fed, the ‘Insurrection’ becomes the ‘Fedsurrection’ in one fell swoop.”

But neither Greene nor Gaetz produced evidence that Epps works for the federal government. And the fact that his picture was removed from the FBI’s wanted list without having charges filed against him could mean any number of things, two legal experts told us.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol disclosed in a Jan. 11 tweet that it has interviewed Epps, who “informed us 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.”



Investigation Is a ‘Work in Progress’

If the FBI removes a picture, it means its agents no longer need the public’s assistance in identifying him, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who was an advisor to former FBI Director James B. Comey, told us in a phone interview.

There are many reasons that the FBI would remove Epps’ photo without filing charges during an ongoing investigation, Richman said, including that he may have spoken to investigators and clarified his role or that he is cooperating with investigators and may implicate others.

“It’s very much a work in progress from the government’s perspective,” said Richman, who also was a consultant to the Department of Justice.

It’s worth noting that Epps’ picture isn’t the only one the FBI has removed. The bureau has also removed photos of individuals numbered 310, 311 and 312, for example. In other cases, the FBI has labeled those in the pictures as having been arrested — individual number 313 is an example of that.

The most common charge for those arrested following Jan. 6 is entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, so it’s also noteworthy that none of the videos included in Revolver’s posts show Epps inside the Capitol building. In fact, two of them appear to show Epps trying to mitigate confrontation between protesters and police outside.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney who co-chaired the attorney general’s advisory committee’s terrorism and national security subcommittee, told us something similar to Richman in an email.

“It is quite possible that insufficient evidence exists to charge him with a crime, either because his conduct did not amount to criminal behavior or the facts cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “It could also be that he has agreed to cooperate, and so any charges are being deferred until prosecutors are able to assess the value of his cooperation.”

McQuade also noted that inciting violence at a protest would violate the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide, which, she said, “prohibits the FBI from interfering with First Amendment protected activities.”

“It is always possible that an individual agent has violated a policy,” McQuade said, but that agent would be guilty of misconduct if he incited violence and the bureau would be guilty of misconduct if it if it planted an agent to incite violence.

We asked the FBI why Epps’ photo had been removed, but a spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment.

At an Oct. 21 hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, told Attorney General Merrick Garland, “There’s a concern that there were agents of the government, or assets of the government, present on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 during the protests.” He then showed video of Epps and noted that he hadn’t been charged.

Garland responded, “As I said at the outset, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not comment on pending investigations.”

We asked the Justice Department if it would be able to comment at this point, but we didn’t get a response.

We also reached out to Epps by phone and email, but didn’t hear back.

But Massie’s suggestion has been echoed by others, including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who has twice posted a video to social media calling the theory that Epps is a federal agent or asset “credible.”



Onetime Leader of Arizona Oath Keepers

We can’t say exactly what role Epps played during the riot or what he may have told investigators afterward. But this is what we do know about him from publicly available information:

Epps and his wife bought property in Arizona in 2010, according to records from the Maricopa County Assessor’s office. Epps has two limited liability companies registered at that address — one is called Patriot Holdings and the other is called Rocking R Farms. Both were formed in 2011.

The couple first tried farming at the property and then switched to hosting weddings and events in 2019, according to their website for the business.

A reporter for the British newspaper the Daily Mail recently went to the property, but Epps declined to comment on the conspiracy theory. Epps had told the Arizona Republic in its Jan. 11, 2021, story that he had been advised by a lawyer not to comment. We weren’t able to find any public comments from Epps after that story ran.

In photos from the Daily Mail story, Epps is wearing a Marines cap and the first Revolver post says that he served in that branch of the military. A spokesman for the Marines confirmed to us that there is a service record for Epps that matches his name and birthdate, which we got from a Pennsylvania arrest record for trespassing in 2015.

The website for his wedding business says that he spent most of his career in construction.

Epps has also been involved with the Oath Keepers, an organization founded in 2009 that describes itself as defending the U.S. Constitution and says on its website that members “will not obey” orders they deem to be unconstitutional.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have each classified the Oath Keepers as an anti-government extremist organization.

Members of the Oath Keepers have been charged in what prosecutors allege was a wide-ranging conspiracy to breach the Capitol and stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

The organization’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, hasn’t been criminally charged, and a lawyer for one of the defendants in the conspiracy case told the judge in December that the uncertainty over whether or not he will be is hampering her ability to plan for trial.

Update, Jan. 13: On Jan. 13, the Justice Department announced seditious conspiracy charges against Rhodes and 10 members of the Oath Keepers.

The congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack subpoenaed Rhodes on Nov. 23, and he was also named in a civil suit brought by seven officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Epps hasn’t been charged with any crimes relating to the riot and we don’t know if he is currently a member of the organization. But in 2011 he was pictured with Rhodes and identified as president of the Oath Keepers’ Arizona chapter on a website called Freedom’s Phoenix. He was also identified as the president of that chapter in a post on the Oath Keepers’ website that year.

Again, we asked him by email about his ties to the group and whether he is currently a member. But he didn’t respond.

So, from what’s publicly available, it appears that Epps is the owner of a wedding venue in Arizona who has been, at least at one point, involved with a group that includes some members who have been charged with conspiring to impede the counting of the electoral votes. We could find no evidence that he has worked for the federal government, but we’ll update this story if more information emerges.

Update, July 14: The New York Times interviewed Epps and reported new information about the timeline for his cooperation with the government. Epps learned from a family member on Jan. 8, 2021, that the FBI was looking for him, according to the Times’ article. “He said he immediately called the bureau’s National Threat Operations Center,” it said, “and his phone records show that he spoke to agents there for nearly an hour.”

The Times also said Epps’ account is supported by transcripts it reviewed of his phone call and a March 2021 discussion Epps had with federal agents.

He told the newspaper that he and his wife have faced death threats over “lies” and that they had to sell their business and their home and move to a new location. They are seeking a lawyer to file defamation suits against people who pushed this conspiracy theory.

Correction, Jan. 13: Matt Walsh hosts a podcast for the Daily Wire. We misidentified the name of the news outlet in our original story.

Update, Jan. 12: An earlier version of this story said the Marines had no record of Epps serving in that branch of the military. After we published our story, a spokesman for the Marines told us he had initially searched for the wrong name but then found a service record for Epps after conducting another search with the correct name. We have updated our story to reflect that.

Update, Jan. 11: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol posted its tweet disclosing its interview with Epps shortly after we posted this story. We’ve added it.
LOL at anyone who wasted time reading that horseshit from Fact-check.Org!!!!
You sheeple think that is an unbiased and reliable source? May as well have Hillary’s nasty fat ass “fact-checking”.

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https://www.peoplesworld.org/articl...lanned-for-hostage-taking-and-assassinations/
Further info reveals Trump’s mob planned for hostage-taking and assassinations
January 11, 2021 11:46 AM CST BY JAY REEVES, LISA MASCARO AND CALVIN WOODWARD

6ovzp0.jpg


WASHINGTON (AP)—Under battle flags bearing Donald Trump’s name, the Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.

“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, too. They hunted any and all lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been stashed in the vicinity.

Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders—Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.

This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.

That revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who briefly took over proceedings in the House chamber as the mob closed in Wednesday, and Pelosi was spirited to safer quarters moments before everything went haywire.

“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”

“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically home-grown fascism, out of control.”

Pelosi said Sunday “the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and direction. And the direction was to go get people.” She did not elaborate on that point in a ”60 Minutes” interview on CBS.

The scenes of rage, violence, and agony are so vast that the whole of it may still be beyond comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos emerging from the scene, much of it from gloating insurrectionists themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos that was around them, the contours of the uprising are increasingly coming into relief.

The staging

The mob got stirring encouragement from Trump and more explicit marching orders from the president’s men.

“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.

Criminals pardoned by Trump, among them Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds they were fighting a battle between good and evil. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched-fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol as he pulled up to press his challenge of the election results.

The crowd was pumped. Until a little after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm for the final minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who was serving his ceremonial role presiding over the process.

Both men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to subvert the election won by Biden. That placed them high among the insurrectionists’ targets, no different in the minds of the mob from the “socialists.”

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things spiraled out of control in what lawmakers call the “People’s House.”

Far-right social media users had openly hinted for weeks that chaos would erupt at the Capitol when Congress convened to certify the election results. As the attack unfolded, they urged followers to “trust the plan” and “hold the line.” Just what the plan might have been is central to the investigation.

The FBI is investigating whether some of the attackers intended to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage. Authorities are particularly focused on why some in the mob were seen carrying plastic zip-tie handcuffs and had apparently accessed areas of the Capitol generally difficult for the public to locate.

The Assault

Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged into police and metal barricades outside the building, shoving and hitting officers in their way. The assault quickly pushed through the vastly outnumbered police line; officers ran down one man and pummeled him.

In the melee outside, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a fire extinguisher at the helmeted head of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers, too.

The identity of the officer could not immediately be confirmed. But Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the next night; officials say he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol Police sent an alert telling workers in a House office building to head to underground transportation tunnels that criss-cross the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the lockdown of the Capitol. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors,” said the email blast. “If you are outside, seek cover.”

At 2:15 p.m., the Senate recessed its Electoral College debate and a voice was heard over the chamber’s audio system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the House chamber were barricaded and lawmakers inside it were told they may need to duck under their chairs or relocate to cloakrooms off the House floor because the mob has breached the Capitol Rotunda.

Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the House chamber, Capitol Police pulled Pelosi away from the podium, she told “60 Minutes.”

“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,’” she said. “And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to leave.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ They said, ‘No, you must leave.’” So she did.

At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House chamber prepared to be evacuated, a gunshot was heard from right outside, in the Speaker’s Lobby on the other side of the barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag like a cape, was shot to death on camera as insurrectionists railed, her blood pooling on the white marble floor.

The Air Force veteran from California had climbed through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby before a police officer’s gunshot felled her.

Back in the House chamber, a woman in the balcony was seen and heard screaming. Why she was doing that only became clear later when video circulated. She was screaming a prayer.

Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been cowering during the onslaught, terror etched into their faces, had been taken from the chamber and gallery to a secure room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms of her suite.

“The staff went under the table, barricaded the door, turned out the lights, and were silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”

On the Senate side, Capitol Police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and reporters and any nearby senators into the chamber and locked it down. At one point about 200 people were inside; an officer armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and the Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone inside to a secure location, the Senate parliamentary staff scooping up the boxes holding the Electoral Collage certificates.

Although the Capitol’s attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, they appeared in some cases to be surprised that they had actually made it in.

When they breached the abandoned Senate chamber, they milled around, rummaged through papers, sat at desks, and took videos and pictures. One of them climbed to the dais and yelled, “Trump won that election!” Two others were photographed carrying flex cuffs typically used for mass arrests.

But outside the chamber, the mob’s hunt was still on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard yelling.

That question could have also applied to reinforcements—where were they?

At about 5:30 p.m., once the National Guard had arrived to supplement the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-on effort began to get the attackers out.

Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements started using tear gas in a coordinated fashion to get people moving toward the door, then combed the halls for stragglers. As darkness fell, they pushed the mob farther out onto the plaza and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs, and percussion grenades.

At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people hunkered down in two nearby congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone must.”

Within the hour, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers affirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shell-shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.

https://www.factcheck.org/2022/01/jan-6-conspiracy-theory-centers-on-baseless-claim-about-ray-epps/

Quick Take​

James Ray Epps was at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. But there is no evidence that he was an FBI plant assigned to instigate the riot, as a conspiracy theory — embraced by at least two members of Congress — claims. There is evidence, however, that Epps once held a leadership role in the Oath Keepers, some of whose members have been charged in the attack.

Full Story​

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump caused a deadly riot as they tried to stop the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. But some high-profile conservatives have been promoting a conspiracy theory that the violence was, instead, the result of a secret government plot.


At the center of the conspiracy theory is James Ray Epps, 60, who owns a wedding venue outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

The FBI added Epps’ picture on Jan. 8 to a list, shared on Twitter, of those it sought for more information about the riot.

On Jan. 11, Epps told the Arizona Republic that he had been there.

Videos on social media from Jan. 5 and 6 also appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C. In one widely viewed video from the night of Jan. 5, Epps tells a crowd, “In fact tomorrow … we need to go into the Capitol.”

When asked about that clip by the Arizona newspaper, Epps said, “The only thing that meant is we would go in the doors like everyone else. It was totally, totally wrong the way they went in.”

A video clip from Jan. 6 shows him near the Capitol as a mob breaks through a police barrier.

These videos and others have been highlighted by Darren Beattie, a former Trump speechwriter, on the right-wing website Revolver. Beattie was fired from his job at the White House in 2018 after his appearance at a conference with a white supremacist two years earlier came to light. He now posts his writing on Revolver and was recently featured in Tucker Carlson’s series about the Jan. 6 riot that aired on Fox News’ streaming service.

Revolver has published two lengthy posts on Epps. The first — headlined, “Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol” — was posted on Oct. 25. The second — “Meet Ray Epps, Part 2: Damning New Details Emerge Exposing Massive Web Of Unindicted Operators At The Heart Of January 6” — was posted on Dec. 18.

The posts each dissect about a half-dozen video clips that appear to show Epps in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 or 6 — along with videos and photos showing other people in the crowd near the Capitol who Beattie’s posts claim are linked to Epps. Both posts focus on the fact that the FBI removed Epps’ picture from its wanted list after about six months and suggest that the FBI did this in an effort to cover up something nefarious.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene cited the most recent Revolver post in her appearance on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s Dec. 31 podcast, in which Greene and Kirk agreed that the removal of Epps’ picture most likely meant that he was an undercover FBI agent.

Kirk described the inclusion of the picture and its later removal as a “right hand, left hand” issue, meaning that the FBI’s right hand didn’t know what its left hand was doing. He explained that because the operation was so big, the FBI member who posted the picture didn’t know Epps was an agent and someone else in the FBI who did know removed the picture six months later.

“Well, if you’re working undercover, everybody can’t know who you are,” Greene added.

She and Rep. Matt Gaetz also cited the story and showed several videos that were featured in it at a press conference they held Jan. 6 on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. The two Republicans announced the event after Trump canceled his press conference scheduled for that day.

“We are here to expose the truth, to ask key questions about what happened on Jan. 6 — who animated the violence, the extent to which the federal government may have been involved,” Gaetz said. “We know this — Jan. 6 last year wasn’t an insurrection. No one’s been charged with insurrection. No one has been charged with treason. But it very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

The most recent Revolver post used the same phrase. It said, “If Ray Epps is a Fed, the ‘Insurrection’ becomes the ‘Fedsurrection’ in one fell swoop.”

But neither Greene nor Gaetz produced evidence that Epps works for the federal government. And the fact that his picture was removed from the FBI’s wanted list without having charges filed against him could mean any number of things, two legal experts told us.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol disclosed in a Jan. 11 tweet that it has interviewed Epps, who “informed us 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.”



Investigation Is a ‘Work in Progress’

If the FBI removes a picture, it means its agents no longer need the public’s assistance in identifying him, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who was an advisor to former FBI Director James B. Comey, told us in a phone interview.

There are many reasons that the FBI would remove Epps’ photo without filing charges during an ongoing investigation, Richman said, including that he may have spoken to investigators and clarified his role or that he is cooperating with investigators and may implicate others.

“It’s very much a work in progress from the government’s perspective,” said Richman, who also was a consultant to the Department of Justice.

It’s worth noting that Epps’ picture isn’t the only one the FBI has removed. The bureau has also removed photos of individuals numbered 310, 311 and 312, for example. In other cases, the FBI has labeled those in the pictures as having been arrested — individual number 313 is an example of that.

The most common charge for those arrested following Jan. 6 is entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, so it’s also noteworthy that none of the videos included in Revolver’s posts show Epps inside the Capitol building. In fact, two of them appear to show Epps trying to mitigate confrontation between protesters and police outside.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney who co-chaired the attorney general’s advisory committee’s terrorism and national security subcommittee, told us something similar to Richman in an email.

“It is quite possible that insufficient evidence exists to charge him with a crime, either because his conduct did not amount to criminal behavior or the facts cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “It could also be that he has agreed to cooperate, and so any charges are being deferred until prosecutors are able to assess the value of his cooperation.”

McQuade also noted that inciting violence at a protest would violate the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide, which, she said, “prohibits the FBI from interfering with First Amendment protected activities.”

“It is always possible that an individual agent has violated a policy,” McQuade said, but that agent would be guilty of misconduct if he incited violence and the bureau would be guilty of misconduct if it if it planted an agent to incite violence.

We asked the FBI why Epps’ photo had been removed, but a spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment.

At an Oct. 21 hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, told Attorney General Merrick Garland, “There’s a concern that there were agents of the government, or assets of the government, present on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 during the protests.” He then showed video of Epps and noted that he hadn’t been charged.

Garland responded, “As I said at the outset, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not comment on pending investigations.”

We asked the Justice Department if it would be able to comment at this point, but we didn’t get a response.

We also reached out to Epps by phone and email, but didn’t hear back.

But Massie’s suggestion has been echoed by others, including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who has twice posted a video to social media calling the theory that Epps is a federal agent or asset “credible.”



Onetime Leader of Arizona Oath Keepers

We can’t say exactly what role Epps played during the riot or what he may have told investigators afterward. But this is what we do know about him from publicly available information:

Epps and his wife bought property in Arizona in 2010, according to records from the Maricopa County Assessor’s office. Epps has two limited liability companies registered at that address — one is called Patriot Holdings and the other is called Rocking R Farms. Both were formed in 2011.

The couple first tried farming at the property and then switched to hosting weddings and events in 2019, according to their website for the business.

A reporter for the British newspaper the Daily Mail recently went to the property, but Epps declined to comment on the conspiracy theory. Epps had told the Arizona Republic in its Jan. 11, 2021, story that he had been advised by a lawyer not to comment. We weren’t able to find any public comments from Epps after that story ran.

In photos from the Daily Mail story, Epps is wearing a Marines cap and the first Revolver post says that he served in that branch of the military. A spokesman for the Marines confirmed to us that there is a service record for Epps that matches his name and birthdate, which we got from a Pennsylvania arrest record for trespassing in 2015.

The website for his wedding business says that he spent most of his career in construction.

Epps has also been involved with the Oath Keepers, an organization founded in 2009 that describes itself as defending the U.S. Constitution and says on its website that members “will not obey” orders they deem to be unconstitutional.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have each classified the Oath Keepers as an anti-government extremist organization.

Members of the Oath Keepers have been charged in what prosecutors allege was a wide-ranging conspiracy to breach the Capitol and stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

The organization’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, hasn’t been criminally charged, and a lawyer for one of the defendants in the conspiracy case told the judge in December that the uncertainty over whether or not he will be is hampering her ability to plan for trial.

Update, Jan. 13: On Jan. 13, the Justice Department announced seditious conspiracy charges against Rhodes and 10 members of the Oath Keepers.

The congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack subpoenaed Rhodes on Nov. 23, and he was also named in a civil suit brought by seven officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Epps hasn’t been charged with any crimes relating to the riot and we don’t know if he is currently a member of the organization. But in 2011 he was pictured with Rhodes and identified as president of the Oath Keepers’ Arizona chapter on a website called Freedom’s Phoenix. He was also identified as the president of that chapter in a post on the Oath Keepers’ website that year.

Again, we asked him by email about his ties to the group and whether he is currently a member. But he didn’t respond.

So, from what’s publicly available, it appears that Epps is the owner of a wedding venue in Arizona who has been, at least at one point, involved with a group that includes some members who have been charged with conspiring to impede the counting of the electoral votes. We could find no evidence that he has worked for the federal government, but we’ll update this story if more information emerges.

Update, July 14: The New York Times interviewed Epps and reported new information about the timeline for his cooperation with the government. Epps learned from a family member on Jan. 8, 2021, that the FBI was looking for him, according to the Times’ article. “He said he immediately called the bureau’s National Threat Operations Center,” it said, “and his phone records show that he spoke to agents there for nearly an hour.”

The Times also said Epps’ account is supported by transcripts it reviewed of his phone call and a March 2021 discussion Epps had with federal agents.

He told the newspaper that he and his wife have faced death threats over “lies” and that they had to sell their business and their home and move to a new location. They are seeking a lawyer to file defamation suits against people who pushed this conspiracy theory.

Correction, Jan. 13: Matt Walsh hosts a podcast for the Daily Wire. We misidentified the name of the news outlet in our original story.

Update, Jan. 12: An earlier version of this story said the Marines had no record of Epps serving in that branch of the military. After we published our story, a spokesman for the Marines told us he had initially searched for the wrong name but then found a service record for Epps after conducting another search with the correct name. We have updated our story to reflect that.

Update, Jan. 11: The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol posted its tweet disclosing its interview with Epps shortly after we posted this story. We’ve added it.
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This dork continues to not listen to the fresno.

That’s ok though. I will forever be his ban daddy!
 
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LOL at anyone who wasted time reading that horseshit from Fact-check.Org!!!!
You sheeple think that is an unbiased and reliable source? May as well have Hillary’s nasty fat ass “fact-checking”.

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I promise I did NOT. He is a cut and paster, because he is not smart enough for conversation...so I skip over EVERYTHING he cuts and pastes
 
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