Ray Epps has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy theories spouted from the likes of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marge and Alex Jones.  Epps is, according to their accounts, is the man who instructed agitators planted in the January 6th crowd to attack Capitol police.

However, evidence has been turned over to the defense attorneys in the cases of people accused of participating in the attack shows that Epps was not a federal agent and acted to try to prevent someone else from starting the violence that day, the New York Times reports.

Epps, a 60-year-old venue manager from Queen Creek, Arizona, was videotaped on January whispering something into a man’s ear just before that man attacked the police line at the Capitol in what’s thought to be the violent spark that started the attack. 

In the days after January 6th, Epps saw that the FBI was looking for him, so he call the local office and gave his account:  he was trying to get the man to calm down, telling him that the police officers there were just doing their jobs.

In the packet of evidence turned over to numerous defense attorneys–whose clients are claiming the January 6th attacks were a false flag operation spurred on by agitators planted by the Deep State, or Democrats, or the Masons, or anyone but the people responsible–recordings of Epps phone call to the FBI details his account.

Another bit of evidence given to defense attorneys:  the videotaped testimony of Ryan Samsel, the Pennsylvania man Epps whispered to, who was arrested for attacking the officers. “He came up to me and he said, ‘Dude’ — his entire words were, ‘Relax, the cops are doing their job,’” Samsel said.

Epps testified to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol and said, under oath, that he is not a law enforcement informant and that he has no connection to any federal agency.

That still doesn’t stop Congressional Republicans from repeatedly bringing up the debunked conspiracy theory.  In October, Republican Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie used a clip of Epps speaking to a pro-Trump crowd on January 5th to question Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if there were any federal agents in the crowd.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) said in a Senate committee hearing, “There are a lot of people who are understandably very concerned about Mr. Epps,” after Tucker Carlson spotlighted Epps on one of his conspiracy “documentaries.”