Citation From the July 14, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So The New York Times has written hundreds and hundreds of articles about January 6th since it happened, describing it as a riot, an insurrection. As part of its coverage last summer, The Times published a video documentary in which The Times reported that one man was actually caught on camera planning an insurrection, encouraging a breach of the Capitol complex. That man's name is Ray Epps. Now, The New York Times noted that Epps was videotaped on both January 5th and January 6th, urging protesters to storm the Capitol. Here it is.
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Now in a lot of ways, that's the strangest video to emerge from January 6th. We played it several times on this show. “We need to go into the Capitol, into the Capitol,” Ray Epps tells the crowd. He says it repeatedly. He's so emphatic about it, encouraging other people to commit a crime that the crowd around him decides he must be a federal agent. They begin chanting, as you just heard, “Fed, Fed.”
So shortly after that video surfaced, the FBI placed Ray Epps on a list of people wanted for questioning. They released it to the public, and you can understand why they did that. According to the Justice Department, what Ray Epps did on that video is a federal crime. In fact, the Biden administration has charged several people with seditious conspiracy for doing precisely what you just saw Ray Epps do – urging others to enter the Capitol complex on January 6th.
Here, for example, is a quote from a DOJ press release. It describes the federal case against five members of the so-called Proud Boys, the group we're supposed to be terrified of. ”On January 6th, 2021, the defendants directed, mobilized and led members of the crowd onto the Capitol grounds and into the Capitol.”
Again, that's what you just saw Ray Epps try to do. But here's the difference. Others who have done that are in prison or facing long terms in prison. But no charges have ever been filed against Ray Epps, despite the fact there's no question who did it, because once more, it's on tape. That's very strange. It just is. And we don't care how people call us names for pointing that out. It is strange and we'd like an answer to what the heck is going on.
Now, we've asked Ray Epps on this show repeatedly to explain why he thinks he has escaped prosecution. And we'll ask him once again tonight. And we will keep asking because we think it is a very obvious and important question that gets to the heart of what is this exactly?
But it's amazing how little Democrats want to hear about this. Again, Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney have spent the last year staging an investigation at great expense, and then a series of public show trials, arresting people in their homes, supposedly designed to discover how and why January 6th happened. But they remain curiously uninterested in the Epps case.
We've got what seems like an actual insurrectionist on tape, but they don't want to talk about it, and they definitely don't want you to talk about it or ask any questions.
As if to prove that point, The New York Times just ran a piece explaining that when you ask questions about Ray Epps, you are committing a moral crime, maybe even helping Putin. The piece was entitled, "It's just been hell; Life as the victim of a Jan 6 conspiracy theory."
Oh, so Ray Epps, the guy telling people to breach the Capitol is now, in the words of The New York Times, a victim, a victim of your unrestrained curiosity. Now, this piece was written by a reporter who has spent years shilling openly for the intelligence agency – may give you some sense of where this storyline comes from. Like the agencies themselves, The New York Times piece was highly deceptive.
For example, The New York Times says that Epps was, "taped urging people to go to the Capitol." Oh, but that's not what the tape shows. Ray Epps was doing something very different. Ray Epps is urging people to go into the Capitol, not to the Capitol. And there's a big difference legally. One is a crime, according to the DOJ, and the other is not a crime. And that's not all Ray Epps did. Epps also told people what they should do once they got inside the Capitol, and that's on video, too. This is just minutes before the first breach of the building that day. Watch.
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"When we go in, leave this here." What does that mean? Well, for some reason, The New York Times reporter didn't ask Ray Epps what he meant by that. Now, the reporter spent a day talking to Epps. It was a day-long conversation, according to the story, but that question never came up. No meaningful question came up. It's all very strange.
The New York Times is mounting a propaganda campaign on behalf of a self-described Trump voter insurrectionist. Now, this is the same paper that cheered Ashli Babbitt's death. But this same paper is weeping for Ray Epps because people have been mean to him online. Hmm. It's almost like they're trying to cover something up.
Now, buried near the end of the New York Times piece, there's a hint. We find this line, "Mr. Epps also said he regretted sending a text to his nephew well after the violence that erupted in which he discussed how he helped orchestrate the movements of people who were leaving Mr. Trump's speech near the White House by pointing them in the direction of the Capitol."
Really? What was in that text. We never heard of that before. And it kind of makes you think the entire New York Times piece was written to drop that little bomblet at the end in the least damaging way. And we'd never seen that text message before. What exactly did Ray Epps say to his nephew? Have prosecutors reviewed that text? The New York Times doesn't tell us, nor does the New York Times tell us whether Ray Epps has had any contact with any federal agencies in the period before January 6th. That's the core question. But they didn't ask it. Why is that? It seems like a major omission.
But don't ask more questions commands The New York Times. Otherwise, Ray Epps may be killed by Mexican drug cartels. Mexican drug cartels? What do they have to do with this? We're not sure. But according to the paper, there are people who have heard, "some cartel members talking about killing Mr. Epps." Right. Because the drug cartels are committed Trump voters and they feel betrayed by Ray Epps. Maybe they're QAnon people, too?
This is highly strange. And if you're going to spend more than a year looking into January 6th and you ignore this? Then it's more than strange. It's an indictment of your motives.