Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who on Jan. 5, 2021, was captured on video advocating for entering the US Capitol the following day, on Tuesday was sentenced on to a year of probation for joining the riot in Washington.
Epps in September last year pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.
He appeared remotely by videoconference and was not in the Washington courtroom when Chief Judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month prison term.
File Photo: AP
On the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, Epps was in a crowd at Washington’s Black Lives Matter Plaza when he was captured on video advocating for entering the Capitol the following day.
“We’re here to storm the Capitol,” he said.
At then-US president Donald Trump’s “stop the steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, Epps was recorded telling other attendees: “As soon as the president is done speaking, we go to the Capitol. The Capitol is this way.”
At the Capitol, Epps was photographed whispering into the ear of another man before rioters breached a police barricade.
Epps also helped other rioters push a large, metal-framed sign into a group of police officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of officers, assistant US attorney Michael Gordon said in a court filing.
“Even if Epps did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct,” Gordon wrote.
The government initially declined to prosecute Epps in 2021 after the FBI investigated his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, and found insufficient evidence to charge him with a crime.
More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials decided by a judge or jury. Approximately 750 rioters have been sentenced, with nearly two-thirds getting some term of imprisonment.
Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed reports of a stolen election.
“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” Epps said.
Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’ denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative.
They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US Marines from 1979 to 1983.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio in September last year was sentenced to 22 years in prison for orchestrating the US Capitol attack.
Tarrio was not in Washington on the day of the riot, but prosecutors said he organized and led the assault from afar.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS