After being falsely accused of being an undercover agent who ignited the Capitol brawl, a Trump supporter sued Fox News and one of the network’s former hosts.
Ray Epps, who twice cast his ballot for the now-former President Donald Trump, filed a complaint, claiming that Fox News and its former anchor Tucker Carlson defamed him by spreading the “fantastical story” that he was a secret government agent who instigated the uprising on January 6.
The lawsuit, which was submitted on Wednesday in Delaware’s Superior Court, accuses Fox News of “creating and disseminating destructive conspiracy theories” in order to deflect responsibility for the 2021 assault from Trump and Republicans.
‘Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,’ states the complaint obtained by The New York Times.
‘It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.’
Carlson on his late-night show Tucker Carlson Tonight in July 2022 claimed without evidence that Epps was a ‘federal agent who helped stage-manage the insurrection’. The show also aired video footage of Epps urging fellow Trump fans to join him in breaching the US Capitol building.
Epps has said on 60 Minutes said that the conspiracy theory led to death threats against him and his wife Robyn and that they had to sell their business and home and move away from Arizona. He is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
The Trump supporter’s lawsuit is the latest of numerous legal threats that have been lodged against Fox News.
Fox News and Carlson in April ‘agreed to part ways’ for nondisclosed reasons – less than a week after Fox News settled a lawsuit over its 2020 presidential election coverage.
The network agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems more than $787million and acknowledged that some of its reporting was incorrect, including segments that enabled some Trump allies to amplify false claims of election fraud.