A January 6 protestor has lost his defamation case against Fox News.
James Ray Epps had claimed that he was besieged by right-wing haters after Fox News guests suggested he was part of a government plot to discredit the January 6 protestors.
According to a brief submitted by Epps’s lawyers, he and his wife received multiple death threats and were forced to move out of their home and live in an RV. It said they drove the RV to a remote, mountainous part of Utah to avoid Trump supporters.
They also had to sell a property that they rented out for weddings, according to a court report in The New York Times.
Newsweek sought email comment on Friday from Epps’ lawyer and from Fox News.
Epps said that the claims against him were made on a show hosted by former Fox presenter, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson left Fox News days after the station settled a defamation action taken by Dominion Voting Machines. The station had to pay out nearly $800 million to end the case.
Carlson had allegedly allowed guests to suggest that Dominion’s voting machines had rigged the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
However, in a ruling on Wednesday, Delaware federal district judge, Jennifer Hall, ruled that Carlson allowing comments about Epps to be aired on his show did not reach the level of “actual malice” required for a defamation lawsuit.
Hall, a Joe Biden appointee, said she accepted that Carlson’s journalism may have been “subpar” but he still had free speech protection under the first amendment.
“For the reasons announced from the bench today, it is hereby ordered that Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim is granted,” Hall wrote.
She said that Carlson’s guests had offered their “own commentary and opinions,” and that Carlson would occasionally acknowledge that Epps had denied the allegations.
Epps was hit with misdemeanor charges for his role in the pro-Trump January 6 protests at the Capitol building.
Federal judge, James Boasberg, sentenced him to one year probation in January 2024. Prosecutors had requested that he be jailed for six months.
In a sentencing memo, they wrote that even if Epps “did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct.”
As part of their evidence, they included a photograph of Epps, dressed in military fatigues, whispering in the ear of a Trump activist shortly before the man committed one of the first acts of violence on January 6.
Epps testified in January 2022 before the congressional January 6 Committee that he did tell pro-Trump protestors to go to the Capitol building, but said he had encouraged them not to use violence.
He agreed that he had been in the right wing Oath Keepers group, but said he split from them because they were too extreme.
The split came when an Oath Keepers leader wanted the group to infiltrate “antifa” – a wide scope of anti-fascist groups. The leader also suggested that they should try to direct the operations of the anti-fascist groups.
“I think that’s when antifa had first come out, and we were seeing a lot of things. They were burning things and doing different things on the news, and he thought that it would be wise if we were to go there and try to direct them, get in with them and direct them to do things in other ways. I didn’t agree with that, so we kind of split ways. They were too radical for my likes,” he said.
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