The Patriot Post® · Why a Wrist-Slap for Ray Epps?

Richard Barnett famously put his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and got four and a half years for it. Rachel Powell, a grandmother of six, broke a Capitol window and got 10 years. Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes never even entered the Capitol but got 18 years. And Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio got 22 years for seditious conspiracy even though he wasn’t in DC that day.

So far, the DOJ has a 100% conviction rate regarding J6 defendants. That’s right: Not a single defendant among roughly 1,200 of them has been acquitted in any jury trial. Why, it’s almost as if the jurists were being selected from a tainted pool, from a pool within the most heavily Democrat city in the entire United States. So much for the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial by a jury of one’s peers.

And yet, of the more than 1,200 January 6 protesters who’ve been arrested and charged and had their lives ruined by overzealous Trump-hating prosecutors, only one of them, Ray Epps, was actually captured clear-as-day on video telling the masses, “We need to go in to the Capitol!”

Only one of them, Ray Epps, was at the scene of the first breach of the Capitol grounds, whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a fellow protester right before that protester tore down a police barricade and allowed the approaching masses to stream toward the Capitol.

And yet on Tuesday, Epps was given a sentence that’s sure to be the envy of every other J6 protester: 12 months probation, a laughable $500 in restitution, and 100 hours of community service. That’s it. No jail time. That was the sentence handed down by DC District Court Judge James Boasberg, after the Justice Department’s prosecutors had recommended a measly six-month jail sentence.

Indeed, as journalist Greg Price notes, “While many J6 protesters are rotting in jail for non-violent crimes, Epps escapes a prison term entirely.” Mind you, this is a guy whose actions that day were so serious that he appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted list — and then mysteriously disappeared from it.

Price adds: “For reference, the average sentence a January 6 defendant has received is 3 years. For those who receive guilty pleas like Epps did, it has been two years. Yet for some reason the guy who instigated the Capitol riot has escaped with probation and community service.”

Nice “justice” if you can get it.

Similarly, independent journalist Julie Kelly made this observation: “Most [Restricted Building or Grounds] 1752 convictions result in some amount of jail time followed by a period of supervised release. Probation only is usually 2-3 years. Real outrage here is that Epps wasn’t charged with more serious offenses to begin with.”

There’s also an element of brazenness to this sentence, just as there was when Epps was charged back in September with a single misdemeanor count of “Disorderly or Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds.” As Kelly observes: “They’re not even trying to conceal the fact that Ray Epps has been treated so differently not just by the DOJ but by the corporate media, who considers everyone at the Capitol on January 6 an insurrectionist, a domestic terrorist. Except somehow Ray Epps emerges as a sympathetic figure.” Indeed, how many other J6 defendants got the kid-glove treatment on “60 Minutes”?

Why, we wonder, is Joe Biden’s DOJ going so easy on a guy who bragged to his nephew via text messages that he “orchestrated” the events of January 6? A guy who, more than anyone else, exhorted protesters to breach the Capitol grounds and the building itself? If Democrats want to decry the violence that J6 protesters engaged in with Capitol Police that day, they should point their fingers squarely at Epps, whose actions encouraged that confrontation.

Where Epps is concerned, we smelled a rat more than two years ago. And this sweetheart deal doesn’t do anything to change our mind. If ever there were a glaring example of two-tiered justice — aside from the tax evasion and gun violation cases against Hunter Biden — this would be it.

Time was when we could trust the FBI to uphold its commitment to the “F” and the “I” on its official seal. But aside from a relative handful of brave whistleblowers, fidelity and integrity are in short supply there these days, at least insofar as the events of January 6 are concerned. And the events surrounding Hunter Biden’s influence peddling. And the events surrounding the targeting of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics. And the events surrounding the non-kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Recall that the FBI shamefully and repeatedly took the Fifth when asked by Senator Ted Cruz about whether it had human assets on site that day. Still, we know the answer. There were most assuredly federal assets at the Capitol that day — at least if we’re to believe the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Matt Rosenberg, who was there himself that day and who said, “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”

A ton. Not one, not two, not three. A ton. Indeed, a U.S. congressman, Louisiana’s Clay Higgins, told Tucker Carlson a few days ago that federal involvement is much greater than any of us thought. “We believe that there were easily 200 FBI undercover assets operating in the crowd, outside the Capitol, embedded into groups that entered the Capitol or provoked entry of the Capitol,” said Higgins, who himself has a law enforcement background.

More than a year ago, Higgins put the question to FBI Director Chris Wray, who’s done nothing but stonewall Congress in its oversight efforts: “Did you have confidential human sources,” Higgins asked, “dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being opened?”

Wray ducked and dodged and weaved and refused to answer. And from that, we’re free to draw our own conclusions.

What Director Wray doesn’t seem to understand is that his lack of transparency regarding Ray Epps and his bureau’s involvement in the events of January 6 only adds fuel to the “conspiratorial” fire. Or maybe he does understand this. Maybe he knows, with the mainstream media’s help, that he can marginalize those of us who are asking questions. Or maybe he knows a truth so disturbing — a truth like the one Congressman Higgins is suggesting — that he can’t possibly come clean about it.

The American people deserve to know the whole truth about what happened that day — not just the half-truths and the outright lies that Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats want us to believe.