Lawyer demands Fox apologize for Jan. 6 conspiracy theory

NEW YORK — The lawyer for a one-time supporter of former President Donald Trump who has been caught up in a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory demanded Thursday that Fox News and host Tucker Carlson retract and apologize for repeated “falsehoods” about the man’s supposed intentions.

The lawyer, Michael Teter, said he gave Fox formal notice of potential litigation. Fox News had no immediate comment.

The action was taken on behalf of Raymond Epps, a former Marine from Arizona, who traveled to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally and was caught there on video twice, once urging demonstrators to go to the Capitol.

He was never arrested, leading some to theorize that he was a government agent conducting a “false flag” operation to whip up trouble that would be blamed on Trump supporters.

There has been no evidence to suggest that was true, and Epps told the congressional committee investigating the attack that he has never worked at or been an informant for a government agency.

Yet the theory, first posed on a fringe conservative website, spread to the more influential Fox News and to Congress and was even mentioned by Trump himself.

Epps told The New York Times last summer that he and his wife had to sell their business and home and leave for an undisclosed location because of threats.

“The crazies started coming out of the woodwork,” Epps testified to the congressional panel.

He has acknowledged being caught on video on Jan. 5, 2021, telling demonstrators to go to the Capitol the next day. He said he meant that the demonstration should be peaceful.

Epps also was caught on video at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but said he did not enter the building.

He has been mentioned on Carlson’s prime-time Fox News Channel show five times in 2023 alone, according to a search of transcripts found in Nexis.

In his letter to Fox on Thursday, Teter demanded “that Mr. Carlson and Fox News retract the claim that Mr. Epps was working for the FBI or any other government entity when he attended the Jan. 6 events and the claim that Mr. Epps acted as an instigator or provocateur of the incident.”