Oct 25 2021
In a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps, instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.
The story of the mystery man, Ray Epps, featured in Rep. Massie’s video above is in fact far more shocking than even the good Congressman implies in the hearing. It’s a story so strange, and so scandalous at every turn, that it threatens to shatter the entire official narrative of the “Capitol Breach” and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th.
Here is a transcript of Thomas Massie’s exchange with the Attorney General, just in case you skipped past the video above.
- Rep. Massie: As far as we can determine, the individual who was saying he’ll probably go to jail, he’ll probably be arrested, but they need to go into the Capitol the next day, is then directing people into the Capitol the next day, is then the next day directing people to the Capitol. And as far as we can find. You said this is one of the most sweeping in history. Have you seen that video, or those frames from that video?
AG Garland: So as I said at the outset, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not comment on pending investigations, and particularly not to comment on particular scenes or particular individuals.
Rep. Massie: I was hoping today to give you an opportunity to put to rest the concerns that people have that there were federal agents or assets of the federal government present on January 5 and January 6. Can you tell us, without talking about particular incidents or particular videos, how many agents or assets of the federal government were present on January 6, whether they agitated to go into the Capitol, and if any of them did?
AG Garland: So I’m not going to violate this norm of, uh, of, of, of, the rule of law.
[Looks down and away]
I’m not going to comment on an investigation that’s ongoing.
There is good reason why AG Garland ran from Massie’s question faster than he could find words — and why he couldn’t even keep eye contact as he was dodging Massie’s gaze.
After months of research, Revolver’s investigative reporting team can now reveal that Ray Epps appears to be among the primary orchestrators of the very first breach of the Capitol’s police barricades at 12:50pm on January 6. Epps appears to have led the “breach team” that committed the very first illegal acts on that fateful day. What’s more, Epps and his “breach team” did all their dirty work with 10 minutes still remaining in President Trump’s National Mall speech, and with the vast majority of Trump supporters still 30 minutes away from the Capitol.
Secondly, Revolver also determined, and will prove below, that the the FBI stealthily removed Ray Epps from its Capitol Violence Most Wanted List on July 1, just one day after Revolver exposed the inexplicable and puzzlesome FBI protection of known Epps associate and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes. July 1 was also just one day after separate New York Times report amplified a glaring, falsifiable lie about Epps’s role in the events of January 6.
Lastly, Ray Epps appears to have worked alongside several individuals — many of them suspiciously unindicted — to carry out a breach of the police barricades that induced a subsequent flood of unsuspecting MAGA protesters to unwittingly trespass on Capitol restricted grounds and place themselves in legal jeopardy.
Corroborating Ray Epps’s IdentityIdentifying the individual in Thomas Massie’s video as Ray Epps was a surprisingly quick and easy task for the Internet.
It took less than a week after January 6 for online researchers to track Epps down and confirm his identity. Researchers uncovered his personal Facebook profile, where Epps shared his life story on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media app, under his real name.
On Facebook, Epps posted photos of himself boating, on horseback, and bear-hunting with a crossbow.
That’s a pretty big bear to hunt with a crossbow. And in many respects, Epps is quite an impressive figure. He served in the US Marines and ultimately worked his way up to full Marine Sergeant, according to his previous public title “SGT USMC” (Sergeant, US Marine Corp) and his private Facebook nostalgic musings.
Researchers went on to locate Epps’s ranch in Arizona, his events business, his private holding company, along with every publicly discoverable record imaginable. They even found his Facebook likes, religious affiliation, and preferred insurance agents and plumbing services, which we’ll avoid reporting in the interest of sparing unnecessary private details.
Epps, who grew up in Arizona and still lives there today, was contacted directly by local newspaper Arizona Central on January 11 — less than a week after January 6, and just three days after Epps was added to the FBI Most Wanted List, a detail upon which we will elaborate later on in this report.
AZ Central, which published its contemporaneous article on Epps under the original headline, In video, Trump supporter says, ‘We need to go into the Capitol’, first confirms his attendance at the Capitol protest:
- A Queen Creek man who acknowledges he was in Washington, D.C., for last week’s rally by President Donald Trump also appears to be shown in videos taken the night before talking about plans to go inside the U.S. Capitol.
In one video that has been widely viewed on Twitter, he can be heard saying, “I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested. I’ll say it. We need to go into the Capitol.”
Ray Epps told The Arizona Republic in a brief telephone interview Monday that he had traveled to the capital for the event, and that he had been advised by an attorney not to speak about it.
“I think the truth needs to get out,” he said.
A video online appears to show him saying, “We’re here to defend the Constitution” and “We need to go into the Capitol.
Epps didn’t stop at simply confirming his presence at the Capitol. Epps effectively corroborated on record that he was the exact same man telling Trump supporters they needed to go inside the Capitol.
- Asked about it, he first told The Republic he would need to see the video. When read a transcript of the comments, he 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.” [AZ Central]
The video below compiles shortened versions of five separate exchanges involving Epps at various hours during the night of January 5 and afternoon of January 6.
As you process the video above and the information to follow, it is important to keep in mind: Ray Epps is a free man. He has never been arrested or charged. Nearly 10 months after January 6, the FBI and Justice Department still refuse to comment on whether Epps has ever been served a search warrant.
But we do know that at least rank-and-file FBI investigators were intensely interested in Ray Epps in the immediate aftermath of January 6.
By January 8, the FBI Capitol Violence Most Wanted List featured a big fat friendly face shot of Ray Epps. The FBI’s Washington Field Office, in a tweet the same day, called for the public’s help in identifying Epps. Epps, dressed in full camo with a bright red “Trump” hat, is the FBI’s “Suspect 16” in the bottom-left quadrant of both images reproduced below:
{FBI images and video of Jan 6th]
For your edification, we matched FBI Suspect Photo #16 to the timestamp 0:48 of the full barricade breach source video:
[more video]
There are currently 486 suspects in the FBI’s Capitol Violence Most Wanted list. The fact that Ray Epps was one of the first 20 suspects the FBI ever publicly featured on its “be on the lookout” boards and “Most Wanted” lists reveals just how high a priority the FBI’s rank-and-file investigators considered Epps to be.
So to recap, on January 8, the FBI begged the public’s help to identify the mysterious “Person #16.”
Then, a funny thing happened: the public actually delivered.
Initially, swarms of left-wing researcher accounts, Antifa groups, and partisan non-profits leapt into Crowdsourced Internet Detective mode. They assigned Epps’s identity various hashtags and tracked his movements throughout January 5-6. The primary three hashtags assigned to Epps were:
* #CrowdControl, because of the way Epps was always controlling every crowd he was a part of on both January 5 and January 6;
* #FedBoomer, because of the shocking video (analyzed below) of Epps being shouted down as a “Fed” by Trump supporters for proposing to enter the Capitol; and
* #BigMagaCamo, which came to be Epps’s final, neutral descriptor name. It is under the #BigMagaCamo moniker that virtually all left-wing databases, shared Google spreadsheets and multimedia archives retain most of their Ray Epps information.
Within days of the riot at the Capitol, archives quickly swelled with videos and images of Epps.
Ray Epps played two roles in virtually every encounter during his Commando Capitol Tour on January 6.
First, Epps instructed his commandos and the crowds at his attention to rush into the Capitol and let nothing stop them. Second, Epps assiduously protected cops and law enforcement so no local or federal officers would be harmed during the precision breaches.
If you want to see what this walking philosophical paradox looks like in action, here’s a clip of Epps patrolling the very front police lines of the Capitol’s Western Plaza at approximately 3:15 p.m at the height of the day’s mania — nearly two and a half hours after Epps and his “breach team” appeared to coordinate the toppling of the Capitol’s East-side police barricades. This was also nearly a full hour after the US Capitol building itself had already been breached. With Epps’s stated mission of breaching the Capitol accomplished, and hundreds of Trump supporters already inside, Epps’s mission magically switched to calming the crowd down, assuring them “We already made our point,” and ensuring that no more of his apparently fellow officers got hurt that afternoon:
So on January 8, 2021, the FBI begged the public for information regarding the identity of Suspect 16, Ray Epps, and even offered a cash reward.
The public obliged, and in less than three days, Ray Epps was identified as Suspect 16. Researchers corroborated his identity with troves of unassailable direct evidence, including an effective confession from Epps himself to his own local newspaper.
Then, for nearly six months, amidst the biggest manhunt in American history, the FBI did nothing with this information. As the FBI did nothing on Epps, it was simultaneously investigating, arresting, raiding and imprisoning hundreds of completely benign MAGA moms and social media trolls — mostly for minor misdemeanor trespassing charges.
Then, on July 1, between the hours of 3:37 a.m. and 5:55 p.m., the FBI finally took action on Ray Epps. But not to prosecute him, or to announce a sweeping investigation or FBI SWAT raid on Epps’s house for all of his phones and electronics. Instead, someone at the FBI quietly and stealthily purged every trace of Ray Epps from the Capitol Riots Most Wanted database.
Using the Wayback Machine from archive.org, we see that from January 8, 2021 until 3:37 a.m. on July 1, every archived version of the FBI.gov website shows Ray Epps as Suspect 16. The below photo is just a snapshot sample from February 16, 2021 — but users can view the Web Archive themselves to witness the Ray Epps purge occurring sometime between 3:37 a.m. and 5:55 p.m. on July 1. That would be during the FBI workday.
[ more FBI site photos from Jan 6th ]
On, July 1, Ray Epps, Suspect 16, was disappeared, as if he never existed.
[ Same FBI page photos, with Epps' photos wiped from the site.]
Now let’s be clear: Ray Epps was not purged because he was arrested. If Epps was arrested, the FBI Wanted List would have the caption “ARRESTED” affixed to his picture, as you can plainly see is done for all other arrested suspects in the database itself.
Further, the searchable Justive.Gov Capitol Breach Cases database confirms there are no case dockets or filings for any “Epps” at all.
To anyone checking the January 6 FBI Most Wanted List today, “Suspect 16” is just a ghost. Only obsessive, fastidious Wayback Machine users spending hours pouring through archived screenshots could ever forensically confirm Ray Epps was ever really a Wanted Man.
The question then arises: what prompted the FBI’s six-month slumber on Epps, and then their sudden purger on July 1?
Well, they panicked. Two major media reports (discussed below) came out on June 30, each of which touched the Ray Epps “Third Rail” from different angles, and the FBI likely realized it was no longer safe to maintain a digital record acknowledging they ever knew who this guy was. Then, the FBI hoped no one would notice the purged files, or would either politely look away or actively assist with their cover-up.
Let’s spell out the chronology a bit more before discussing the two pieces that likely prompted the FBI’s freakout.
First, while left-wing and Antifa accounts had been all over Ray Epps since Week 1, Epps did not come to right-wing and pro-Trump researchers’ attention until June 17, when a viral Twitter thread highlighted a series of shocking, verifiable livestream video timestamps where Epps instructed Trump supporters to go into the Capitol and then was shouted down on suspicions he was a Federal agent.
Just three days prior to the publication of the Epps Twitter thread, Revolver published a June 14 report on FBI operatives embedded within the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on January 6th, which created a national narrative igniting a firestorm around the issue.
With Revolver’s piece catching national attention, the Epps Twitter clips posted on June 17 intensified right-wing interest in how it could be possible that Epps remained unindicted. After all, the Justice Department, in its hundreds of arrests, claims to still be stumped by the lack of evidence that anyone had actually pre-planned the storming of the Capitol.
On June 30th, the New York Times published a piece entitled Inside the Capitol Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation. This is the first of the two aforementioned June 30th publications that caused major problems for the FBI’s narrative.
The New York Times analysis purported to be “the official record” of what happened at the Capitol that day. But there were a few problems with “the official record” produced by the New York Times. For one, it told an outright lie about Ray Epps:
- One of the biggest questions hanging over the aftermath of Jan. 6 was whether the riot was planned and carried out by organized groups.
By identifying and tracking key players throughout the day, we found that most — even some at the forefront of the action — were ardent, but disorganized Trump supporters swept up in the moment and acting individually.
The first person to enter the Capitol building, for example, was a 43-year-old husband and father from Kentucky named Michael Sparks. He has no known affiliation with any organized groups. Ray Epps, an Arizona man seen in widely-circulated videos telling Trump supporters on multiple occasions to go into the Capitol, also seemed to have acted on his own.
The NYT appears to be running cover for the FBI by referencing Epps’s appearance in “widely-circulated videos” and concluding that he “seemed to have acted on his own.”
This media malpractice NYT cover-up lie could not be further from the truth.
Below, we see Epps give explicit instructions, mere minutes before the very first breach of a police barricade on January 6. He gives these instructions to a still-unindicted, still “FBI Wanted” ex-Marine commando nicknamed “MaroonPB” who is antagonizing police officers with a blazing bullhorn.
After receiving instructions from Epps, MaroonPB replies, “Noted” — which, last we checked, means “stipulated”, “understood” or “agreed.” This is an explicit verbal agreement between two or more people — the opposite of the NYT’s claim that Epps “acted on his own.”
In case it wasn’t clear enough already, Epps also says “One more thing” — stipulating he gave the man a set of instructions before adding others. And those next instructions were, “When we go in, leave this here,” likely in reference to MaroonPB’s cannister of bear spray.
Amazingly, on June 30th, the NYT’s “Insurrection” obsessives, trying to decipher a secret “dog whistle” between President Trump, Stephen Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and Roger Stone and the tens of thousands of MAGA protesters in DC that day, were now poking their own eyes out to avoid acknowledging actual coordination, caught on tape, between unindicted persons apparently orchestrating the opening act of the Capitol attack.
In any case, the NYT story must have created a real public relations headache for the FBI. How could the New York Times tell tens of millions of people that Epps was a key instigator in the “Makeup of the Mob” if the FBI had already known about Epps for 6+ months and even had his mugshot on the Most Wanted list? Perhaps the Times would have done the FBI a much bigger favor if they had simply not referred to Epps at all.
Could it be that the FBI decided they’d just purge Epps from the list, never tell anyone, and pretend they had never seen all the videotapes, the images, the message boards, the newspaper confession, and so on? As long as no one blew up Ray Epps’s name any further, the whole thing might blow over.
Also on June 30th, Revolver published a bombshell report exploring the extraordinary degree of federal protection afforded to founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, a man named Stewart Rhodes. This is the second of the aforementioned two pieces that likely triggered the FBI’s freakout.
A recent Revolver update on the inexplicable FBI protection of Stewart Rhodes recaps the strange situation.
Prosecutors argue it was:
* Rhodes who established the Oath Keepers conspiracy;
* Rhodes who recruited people into the conspiracy;
* Rhodes who organized and gave key instructions to the conspirators;
* Rhodes who suggested the use of illegal weapons such as “collapsible batons”;
* Rhodes who activated the conspiracy in real-time on January 6 via text messages and phone calls
to his lieutenants from 1:38 – 2:40 p.m..;
* Rhodes who waited on the Capitol steps for the completion of the conspiracy from approximately 3:30-4:00 p.m..; and
* Rhodes who later congratulated everyone on a conspiracy well done at 7:14 p.m.
Furthermore,
The Oath Keepers indictment cites 18 phone calls as evidence of coordination of a common conspiracy (for those following along, these calls are in paragraphs 105, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 118, 122, 123, 125, 126, 130, 134, 135, 138, 174, 175, and 176).
Stewart Rhodes is the person either calling or being called in 10 of these 18 calls. Put another way: Rhodes makes or receives 55% of all phone calls in a massive conspiracy case spanning 16 defendants.
When you combine phone calls involving Rhodes and those involving the mysteriously unindicted Person Ten, who Rhodes appointed his ground commander for the day, that number rises to 100% of all phone calls.
So what exactly does the curious case of Stewart Rhodes have to do with Ray Epps?
Students of FBI history should quickly absorb the lesson that infiltrating Feds are like roaches: whenever you spot one, it is guaranteed there are dozens others nearby. Feds simply never, ever, operate alone. This is how you end up with at least 12 FBI informants in a tiny “right-wing” Michigan militia plot from October 2020 (that’s just informants, not even agents), 15 informants in the “right-wing” 2016 Malheur plot, dozens in the 2014 Bundy Ranch affair — including six FBI undercover agents posing as fake documentarians shooting a fake documentary — and the list goes on.
You’ll be shocked, then, to learn that the Oath Keepers sport an eye-poppingly long history of FBI infiltration.
And lo and below, Ray Epps and Oath Keepers kingpin Stewart Rhodes are old pals in the organization. In fact, Stewart Rhodes was Ray Epps’s old boss. Back in 2011-2012, Epps was the Arizona state chapter leader of the Oath Keepers — the biggest Oath Keepers chapter in the country — while Rhodes was and remains the national leader. (See, e.g., archived proof of Epps as Arizona Oath Keeper President here, here and here.) Reason Magazine’s Radley Balko even interviewed Ray Epps while Epps was running the Arizona Oath Keepers a decade ago:
- This week I also spoke with Ray Epps, a retired Marine sergeant from Mesa, Arizona and president of the Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, the controversial organization of police and military personnel who have vowed not to enforce laws they believe are unconstitutional. After hearing about Guerena’s death, Epps drove to Tucson to investigate.
Oddly, Stewart Rhodes’s website OathKeepers.org deleted several historical blog posts featuring events run by Ray Epps, where Epps was listed as both President and Press Contact.
The Wayback Machine’s automatic archiving process suggests Stewart Rhodes’s OathKeepers.org posts concerning Ray Epps were effectively dormant from 2011 until 2021. Then, at approximately 3 p.m. on January 27, 2021, there is an update showing the page had been 404’d.
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