The undercover agent who wasn’t

In the Phoenix suburb of Queen Creek, the property seemed far from the city’s sprawl and roaring traffic. Its windmill, cow pastures and rustic brick farmhouse evoked earlier times — the front doors were even made of wood from the Revolutionary era.

James Ray Epps and his wife, Robyn, had made the affectionately named Knotty Barn the center of their wedding venue business. Set on five pastoral acres, with a courtyard featuring a red brick walkway, wooden arch and three-tiered Italian fountain, Knotty Barn was an ideal place to get married.

Ray and Robyn, in their late 50s and retired from careers in roofing and sales, were living on the bucolic property and helping young people begin new chapters together when, in 2021, their peace was shattered. Threatening voicemails and text messages began flooding their business phone and email accounts. People drove past the ranch brandishing weapons. One day, Ray found bullet casings littered across the property.

“We’re coming Ray!!!!!!” read one email. “Hopefully you are filled with holes soon.”

A churchgoing Republican who served four years in the United States Marine Corps and twice voted for Donald Trump, Epps was an unlikely target of death threats. Yet Epps had become something of a paradox: He believed in one conspiracy theory, only to find himself in the red-hot center of another — a theory that would place him in the crosshairs of a former president, turn him into a punching bag on Fox News, and lead to the complete collapse of the life he and his wife had built, sending them into hiding.

Conspiracy theories have never played a more prominent role in a presidential campaign, embraced by certain candidates on the left and right. The case of Ray Epps, now the subject of a lawsuit against Fox News, stands as a cautionary tale. And it began, like all conspiracy theories do, with one tiny grain of doubt.

“Hey, FBI agent,” one voicemail said. “Turn yourself in, bud. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”

By 2020, Ray and Robyn Epps had been living at Rocking R Farms in Queen Creek for 10 years. As they managed the property and hosted weddings, they observed the nation’s tumultuous year of pandemic, presidential campaigning and social unrest. They frequently watched Fox News during Covid-19 lockdowns, and as racial justice demonstrations erupted after George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer. After President Joe Biden’s win at the polls, they heard Tucker Carlson and other Fox News pundits discussing Trump’s claims of election fraud.

The fear that it was apparently not 100 percent clear who won the election worried Ray. There should be no doubt, he thought, as to who clinched an election in a nation seen as a beacon of freedom around the world. The allegations stood out to Ray and Robyn because of something that had happened earlier that fall: They had received not just their own two vote-by-mail ballots, but also an additional three addressed to people they didn’t know. In the years they had owned the property, they had never heard the names on those envelopes. Ray believed that the U.S. Constitution was God-inspired and voting sacred. And so the mystery ballots weighed on Ray’s mind as Trump and his supporters doubled down on their claims. What did the extra ballots mean? Were they evidence of the stolen election Trump kept talking about?

On December 19, even after election audits and dozens of judges rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud, the former president tweeted about the Stop the Steal rally planned for January 6, the day Congress would certify Biden’s victory. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump wrote. “Be there, will be wild!”

Ray’s son Jim, who lived in Utah, planned to attend the rally and asked Ray to come. Ray hesitated because winter was a busy wedding season, but Robyn suggested he go. She voiced concern the rally might face violence from antifa, a collection of leftist anarchist groups known for confronting attendees of far-right demonstrations.

After talking with his wife and son, Ray began to think of the rally as a father-son bonding opportunity. On New Year’s Day 2021, Robyn purchased Ray’s plane ticket to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Epps and his son spent most of January 5, according to court documents, touring historic sites. That night, Ray and Jim returned to their hotel in D.C. After dinner, Jim went out with a friend. He soon called his father to say there was trouble at a Trump parade.

Ray Epps went to see if he could sort the trouble out. As he approached the group gathered on a street in downtown Washington, D.C., he heard people shouting about Black Lives Matter. A bearded man yelled through a megaphone at a line of police officers, calling them names and accusing them of breaking their oaths.

Epps believed one person can make a difference and had taught his children the same. During his military service, “Marines are always in front” had become a mantra. And as a broad-shouldered man who stood over six feet tall, he played the figure of a leader and protector. Epps addressed the bearded man who was shouting at police. “Tonight, you can bring shame on us,” Epps said he warned the man. “That’s not what it’s about.”

The crowd reacted, but not in the way Epps had hoped. A few dismissed him, calling him “boomer.” “We’re here to defend the Constitution,” Epps shot back. “Tomorrow, we need to go in to the Capitol. In to the Capitol, peacefully.”

Epps would later say he intended to redirect the crowd’s attention to what he believed to be the goal of the next day’s rally: showing support for President Trump and marching peacefully to the Capitol to protest problems with the election.

What Epps didn’t know was the man with the megaphone was a social media influencer named Anthime Gionet. Known online as “Baked Alaska” (he was born in Anchorage), Gionet, who livestreamed their conversation, responded to Epps’ attempts to calm the crowd and turned on him, chanting, “Fed! Fed!” The crowd followed suit. Epps left the hecklers and walked back to his hotel.

On the morning of January 6, Epps and his son rose early, grabbed breakfast sandwiches at a nearby convenience store and arrived at the Ellipse before 8 a.m. Wearing a beige shirt and a red Trump baseball cap, Epps told people to plan on marching to the Capitol after the president’s remarks. Then, huddled against the cold, they watched the lineup of speakers.

At noon, Trump took the podium. “We will never give up; we will never concede,” he told the cheering crowd. “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”

Epps noticed some in the crowd breaking away, including men he recognized from the night before. He followed, trying to get to the front of the group. Epps had expected a peaceful demonstration, like the one he had attended with his father, the 2009 Taxpayer March on Washington, also known as the 9/12 Tea Party, when thousands of people had marched to the U.S. Capitol to protest President Barack Obama’s tax policies, health care reform efforts and bank bailouts.

But today, as the megaphone-toting protesters walked faster along Pennsylvania Avenue, Epps saw them grab sticks and metal bars, according to court records. In 2009, he remembered demonstrators picking up trash — not makeshift weapons. “Put that down,” Epps pleaded, “you’re going to get shot!”

He followed the crowd as it pushed aside mesh fencing and bicycle rack barriers marking the restricted area of the Capitol grounds. His eyes fell on a set of metal barricades guarded by U.S. Capitol Police officers up ahead. Clearly, the building wasn’t open to the public this time. The crowd’s fervor only grew. People screamed at the police, calling them “oath breakers” and saying they were “on the wrong side.”

Conspiracy subcultures have always carried high risks for participants because they’re heavy on paranoia and light on objective, agreed upon facts.

On Epps’ 2009 visit to Washington, he met military veterans and law enforcement officers who belonged to a newly founded group called the Oath Keepers. Led by Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers whom Epps met struck him as stand-up guys, and he joined the organization. He served as Arizona state chapter president but within two years had parted ways with the militia (he would later say they had become too radical).

In the days leading up to January 6, Rhodes and his followers had stockpiled firearms for what they called a “quick-reaction force.” As early as 2019, Rhodes had announced to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his popular online show Infowars that if Trump were not reelected, “we won’t accept the results” and will have “no choice but to fight.” The Oath Keepers had come to embrace a widening web of conspiracy theories: The government intended to seize Americans’ weapons, force resistors into concentration camps, and institute a one-world socialist government known as the “New World Order”; Jews were replacing white people with immigrants; the world was controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who could only be defeated by Trump.

Around the time Epps positioned himself before the barricades on Capitol grounds and tried to calm the crowd, someone hung a noose from the crossbeam of the wooden gallows erected in front of the building. “Hang Mike Pence!” people chanted, while images of the gallows were projected around the country.

Some in the crowd, brandishing an 8-by-10-foot Trump sign on wheels with heavy metal casters, began advancing, threatening to use the sign as a battering ram. Epps watched as on either side of him, people pushed the barricades. The police pushed back. Then the rioters pulled the barricades toward themselves and officers fell onto the toppled metal. As the police went down, the rioters climbed over the pile and ran toward the building.

When asked later why he followed, Epps said he thought maybe he could still do some good, or at least prevent more damage. Yet the crowd toppled a third set of barriers, including a waist-high metal fence. They gathered on the West Plaza, where police struggled to keep rioters from advancing while being assaulted by fists, pepper spray and flagpoles.

Epps stood in the few feet of space between the police line and the advancing crowd. “Take a step back,” he told them. “We’re not trying to get people hurt. They don’t want to get hurt; you don’t want to get hurt. Just back up. … We’ve made our point.”

Then, the police sprayed tear gas to disperse the attackers. It hung in the air as rioters ended their fight with the officers and began to disperse. When Epps heard calls for a medic, he ran toward the voice to find a protester sprawled on the ground, seemingly unconscious. An EMT appeared and Epps helped him carry the man away from the building. “Emergency! Clear the way!” they shouted as they pushed through the crowd streaming in the opposite direction toward the Capitol. They reached a patch of grass and set the man down.

Epps looked back toward the Capitol. People were crawling all over the building, climbing the scaffolding on the walls. He felt sick to his stomach. He turned and made his way toward his hotel. As he did, he didn’t know rioters were running through the Capitol building looting the historic rooms and breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office while secret service agents rushed Vice President Pence to an undisclosed location. He didn’t know lawmakers donned gas masks while more than a hundred police officers were assaulted.

And he didn’t know that this trip to Washington would forever change his life in Queen Creek. He never imagined footage of him trying to de-escalate attacks on police officers had gone viral thanks to “Baked Alaska” — or that a conspiracy theory was emerging that blamed him for being the undercover agent who infiltrated the rally and instigated the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol.

“Meet Ray Epps, the Fed-protected provocateur who appears to have led the very first 1/6 attack on the Capitol,” read an October 25, 2021, headline on Revolver News. Darren Beattie, the website’s editor and a former Trump staffer, was eventually invited onto Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Before millions of viewers, Beattie blamed undercover FBI agents for the January 6 insurrection and called Epps “the smoking gun of the entire Fedsurrection.”

It was a classic “false flag” conspiracy theory: the idea that it was secretly the FBI, not enraged Trump supporters or white supremacist militias, that led thousands of people to illegally enter the Capitol, destroy property, assault police and threaten the lives of public officials. Carlson accused Epps of leading the charge and mocked him with names like “FedEpps.”

Ironically, Epps’ cooperation with FBI investigators provided more fodder. Two days after January 6, a relative had told Epps his photo was posted on the FBI’s “most wanted” list. By that time, Epps had seen images of destruction from inside the Capitol and said he felt sad and sickened about what happened. He immediately called the FBI and participated in a phone interview. His photo had since been removed from the FBI website. Yet Carlson cited its removal as more evidence proving Epps was a covert agent. He would broadcast more than 20 segments about Epps, using the fact that Epps hadn’t been charged for crimes as evidence that he was protected by the bureau.

When the congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack interviewed Epps and released a statement saying that he “informed us that he was not employed by” any federal agency, Carlson suggested they too were protecting Epps. FBI Director Christopher Wray’s statement that Epps had never worked for the bureau also failed to quell the rumors.

T-shirts appeared on eBay printed with, “Arrest Ray Epps for Leading the Jan. 6 Fedsurrection.” Republican politicians spread the conspiracy theory, too. Trump mentioned Epps at an Arizona rally. “How about the one guy, ‘Go in, go in, get in there everybody, get in there, go, go, go,’” he said. “Nothing happens to him.”

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show and questioned whether Epps was a federal asset and why he hadn’t been arrested. At a U.S. House of Representatives oversight hearing during which lawmakers questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., played video of Epps at the Capitol. “This individual has not been charged with anything,” he said. “Can you tell us how many agents or assets of the federal government were present on January 6?”

Ray and Robyn began to receive unwelcome visitors at the ranch. Reporters camped outside, trying to get them to talk (at this point, Epps had retained an attorney who advised against speaking to the press). People drove by and screamed threats. Ray and Robyn had to hire security to keep people off their property during weddings, though their business soon ran dry.

“Hey, FBI agent,” one voicemail said. “Turn yourself in, bud. Nothing can stop what’s coming.” Others were more violent. “I was just checking to see if you guys are planning any more insurrections,” another caller said. “It’s going to be fun to see your place go down in flames.”

One review of Rocking R Farms gave it one star and said, “This IS the guy who was a major player and suspected FED organizing ANTIFA and BLM to rush the capitol while dressed like a Trump supporter…He’s obviously a fed plant and not trustworthy!” A text message read, “You better sleep with one eye open.”

When the congressional committee interviewed Epps in early 2022 and asked how all this had changed his life, he told them about the threats and dwindling business. But the point when he became most emotional was when he said his grandchildren were getting bullied at school because they shared his last name.

“The leaders that try to ride this thing for gain, I just believe they could do better,” Epps said. “It’s saddened me because I respected these people. … I’m very disappointed.”

After months of threats, Ray and Robyn decided they could no longer remain in their home or continue running the business. They sold Rocking R Farms, moved into a 350-square-foot RV and went into hiding.

The couple hoped by remaining quiet, they would be able to move on. But by spring 2023, a year after they fled home, Carlson was still airing the allegations. That summer, Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Soon after Epps sued, he found himself charged with a crime. Federal prosecutors filed one count of disorderly conduct against him last fall, more than two years after the FBI recommended against prosecution based on insufficient evidence that he had entered the Capitol building, engaged in violence or committed other crimes. Epps’ attorneys attributed prosecutors’ belated about-face to the “Fedsurrection” conspiracy theory.

When I reached out to Epps, he declined to be interviewed for this story. I was disappointed, but it wasn’t hard to imagine why he didn’t want to talk. Fox News wasn’t the only media outlet that had criticized him. “You’ve given them a lot of ammunition to paint you as this instigator,” CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker told Epps after he and Robyn shared their story on “60 Minutes.”

As I watched video of Epps from January 6 and pored over transcripts of his sworn testimony from court documents and the congressional committee interview, I wondered: Why had a seemingly rational person fallen victim to conspiracy culture? Politically polarized cable news that relies on punditry, not factual reporting, was obviously part of it, along with social media “influencers” who build massive audiences by posting paranoid yarns. It’s never been easier for people to cherry-pick facts that match their beliefs — or fabricate them altogether. But why did so many of these fabrications hinge on scapegoating? Scholars say the answer can be found in the belief that white people have become increasingly marginalized, or “white grievance.”

“There is such tremendous income inequality that it produces an inevitable sense of grievance,” Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University emeritus professor who studies conspiracy theories and political extremism, told me. As declines in manufacturing and other blue-collar pursuits left many working-class white people struggling economically, many blamed bicoastal elites, rising immigration and anyone who had been a “minority” but seemed to be advancing into the “majority.” The sense of marginalization among Americans who traditionally viewed themselves as superior has perhaps led them to feel threatened. And people who feel threatened are more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Those who believe that white people experience racial discrimination, studies show, are more likely to believe the electoral process is corrupted.

In her book “Republic of Lies,” Anna Merlan cites the election of Obama as a milestone in the mainstreaming of weaponized conspiracy theories. That’s when Trump gained an audience as a vocal proponent of “birtherism,” the conspiracy theory that Obama had not been born in the U.S. At the Tea Party protest Epps attended in 2009, people carried a sign scrawled with “Liar Liar, Pants on Fire!” and surveys at the time showed 25 percent of Americans still believed the conspiracy theory even after Obama released copies of his birth certificate.

After the 2016 election conspiracy theories became even more mainstream. On twitter, liberals spun theories about Trump’s ties to Russia, while Trump’s influence on the Republican Party promoted a political ecosystem in which conspiracy played an increasingly prominent role.

In 2017, white supremacists protesting the removal of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville chanted, “You will not replace us!” and, “Jews will not replace us!” (slogans from “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory accusing Jews of orchestrating mass immigration to dilute the white race). It was later that summer when, after a separate white supremacist rally ended with a neo-Nazi driving a car into the crowd and killing a young woman, Trump famously said there were “fine people on both sides.” To people within pockets of the right, that comment sanctioned weaponized conspiracy from the highest levels of government, Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in domestic terrorism, told me.

Many acts of weaponized conspiracy theory involve extremists attacking political enemies, like when an election denier broke into Pelosi’s home and bludgeoned her husband with a hammer. Yet Epps fell victim to something else: weaponized conspiracy theory wielded by, and against, people on the right, as when the rioters who entered the Capitol threatened to hang the vice president. “This is about compelling behavior that the extremists would like,” Ware told me. “The terroristic threat of violence against people on the right who are deemed to be insufficiently pure is working to influence the behavior of people on the right (as a whole).”

Ware pointed out that Trump himself excels at weaponizing conspiracy theories. After using stolen election claims to cling to power, he is campaigning on them once again as he seeks to retake the White House. “You can boil down Trump’s real genius to four words: fake news and deep state,” Ware says. “If anyone inside the government criticizes him, they’re dismissed, and if anyone in the GOP says anything, they’re dismissed as a RINO (Republican in name only). He has created a space where only he can be trusted.”

Tucker Carlson accused Epps of leading the charge on January 6 and mocked him with names like “FedEpps.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meanwhile, has built a presidential campaign on a dizzying collection of conspiracy theories. The former Democrat turned independent has suggested without evidence that the CIA assassinated his uncle, John F. Kennedy; COVID-19 was intentionally created in a lab; AIDS is not caused by HIV; antidepressants cause school shootings; Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain” and 5G networks are being used for mass surveillance, just to name a few. Kennedy’s response to being fact-checked or criticized for spreading beliefs that lack scientific merit is to claim he is being censored by a plot on the part of government and media.

False flag conspiracy theories have also flourished about the Israel-Gaza war since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli civilians. Despite ample evidence of the atrocities, some on the left insist that instead of Hamas, it was secretly Israel that perpetrated the murder and hostage-taking spree to justify committing genocide against Palestinian civilians. Some versions of Oct. 7 denialism even claim the U.S. was behind the secret plot. Last winter, as polls confirmed a third of Americans still believed the last U.S. election was stolen and a quarter believed the false flag theory that FBI operatives instigated the attack on the Capitol, accusations that Israel had created a “false flag” in relation to Oct. 7 surged on platforms including TikTok, Reddit and 4chan.

Conspiracy subcultures have always carried high risks for participants because they’re heavy on paranoia and light on objective, agreed-upon facts, says Brian Hughes, co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. Yet the biggest factor that puts someone like Epps at risk of believing a lie that leads to either committing violence or being victimized by it, he says, are public figures repeating misinformation and condoning violence. “The larger issue here has to do with leaders in politics and the media condoning violence or encouraging it,” says Hughes. “During the attacks on the Capitol, the people doing it thought they had sanction from the highest levels of government.” As Epps said during his “60 Minutes” interview, “Fox News, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz … they were all telling us before (January 6) that (the election) was stolen — who has more impact on people, them or me?”

Because holding public officials accountable for misinformation is so challenging, legal efforts have turned to media figures. Before Epps filed his lawsuit, Dominion Voting Systems won a $787 million settlement from Fox News in its own defamation case, alleging Fox acted with malice in airing baseless claims that Dominion’s voting equipment switched votes from Trump to Biden. Family members of children, educators and one law enforcement officer killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre won a $965 million judgment from Alex Jones of Infowars after he promoted the conspiracy theory that the grieving families were actors who faked the school shooting to strip Americans of their guns.

Michael Teter, Epps’ attorney, says his client’s lawsuit allows Epps to speak the truth while holding Fox News accountable for the destruction it causes “as it places falsehoods above facts and profits over people.” That accountability, Teter told me, is critical. “This case is one of several that seek to do two things: demonstrate the real-world consequences of spreading lies and misinformation and to hold accountable those who seek to capitalize — either for profit or political gain — on distortions and falsehoods.”

Teter is also managing director of The 65 Project, a bipartisan nonprofit founded to establish consequences for attorneys who filed the 65 now-dismissed lawsuits alleging the 2020 election was stolen. The organization has filed more than 75 ethics complaints against attorneys, taking the effort beyond just the most high-profile lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, who had his law license suspended and faces criminal charges for alleged efforts to overturn the election.

“It’s not just about holding to account the lawyers that have engaged in this in the past,” says Teter, a former Utah assistant attorney general who has taught constitutional law at the University of Utah law school. “It’s about using the discipline they receive so that future lawyers see this is not something they can abuse without consequences.”

As Trump faces his own prosecution on charges of trying to overturn his election loss, he frames the indictment as a conspiracy by the “deep state” and vows revenge on the campaign trail. “I am your warrior. I am your justice. … I am your retribution,” Trump told followers at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “With you at my side, we will demolish the ‘deep state.’”

Nearly two years after Trump mentioned Epps and the “Fedsurrection” conspiracy theory at an Arizona rally, the two men’s legal fates intertwined at a Washington, D.C., courthouse.

On January 9, 2024, Trump watched a U.S. Court of Appeals panel hear his claims that he should be immune from prosecution on federal charges that he plotted to overturn the election. “I think it’s very unfair when a political opponent is prosecuted,” he told reporters, claiming, without evidence, that Biden was behind the charges.

The same day, Epps appeared via Zoom in a different courtroom in the same building. He was sentenced to a year of probation for his role in the January 6 insurrection. “Trust in elected officials and Fox News led to my gullibility in believing the election was stolen,” he told the judge after pleading guilty. “What I witnessed (on January 6) was rage and vulgarity on a level I’ve never seen before, and it was generated by people like me, not the FBI or antifa.”

When Epps appeared before the Jan. 6 congressional committee, he said he felt used. “I’m being used to further their agenda,” he said. “To sell their news … or, to further them in a political career.”

As primary season approached, I wondered: Who else would wind up feeling used, getting hurt or worse? Ware, from the Council on Foreign Relations, said he worried about the same thing. “Those conspiracy theories,” he told me, “can whip up such a passionate frenzy that anybody can get sucked into it.”

This story appears in the July-August 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine . Learn more about how to subscribe .