The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot will eventually release a transcript of its scheduled Friday interview with Ray Epps, a man at the center of federal riot provocation theories.
“We will” release the transcript of the interview with Epps, Jan. 6 Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told the Washington Examiner Thursday. “But you know, there’s a review process that goes with every deposition.”
“He has to have an opportunity to review it, say, ‘This is what I said,’” Thompson said. “At some point, it will be made available. I just can’t tell you when.”
Epps previously spoke to the committee “several weeks ago,” Thompson previously told the Washington Examiner. Epps’s lawyer John Blischak told Politico that the meeting was a precursor for Friday’s transcribed interview.
SKEPTICS UNSATISFIED WITH RAY EPPS EXPLANATION, KINZINGER LASHES OUT
Epps, an Arizona resident, former Marine, and previously a member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was seen in videos encouraging people on Jan. 5 to go into the Capitol and was at the site of an early perimeter fence breach on Jan. 6. He was put on an FBI list of the most wanted Capitol rioters but was removed from the list without explanation. And Epps wasn’t being arrested.
“I’m probably going to go to jail for it, OK? Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol,” Epps said to a crowd on the evening of Jan. 5, prompting the crowd to respond, “No!,” and accusing him of being a federal prosecutor by chanting, “Fed, fed, fed.”
I just played this video for AG Merrick Garland. He refused to comment on how many agents or assets of the federal government were present in the crowd on Jan 5th and 6th and how many entered the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/lvd9n4mMHK
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) October 21, 2021
That prompted unproven “fedsurrection” theories that Epps and others were federal agents or informants who provoked the riot at the Capitol.
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton questioned federal law enforcement officials about Epps during congressional hearings. The federal officials declined to answer questions about Epps or the involvement of federal agents, citing a long-standing policy to not comment on current investigations.
After senators brought Epps up in a hearing, a Jan. 6 committee spokesperson released a statement last week, saying Epps “informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency.”
Select committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, said that Epps “didn’t enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was removed from the most wanted list because, apparently, he broke no laws.”
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Epps’s lawyer Blischak also told Politico that he was removed from the list in part because he was no longer an unidentified suspect.
That explanation did not satisfy skeptics, who pressed for more information on whether Epps was working with any federal agency and thought that Epps’s behavior was suspect and perhaps worthy of arrest.
