Conspiracy theory: Ray Epps as FBI confidential informant (CI) inserted at Jan 6th Capitol Riot dismissed he is Oath Keeper

As far back as 2011 Ray Epps was listed as Arizona state chapter president of the Oath Keepers, he ain't no CI for the Feds. In the photo above Ray Epps is telling thug Ryan Samsel on Jan 6th to back off, the cops are only doing their job in front of the Capitol building. Ryan Samsel is the thug who pushed the police line barricade back onto Capitol cop Caroline Edwards causing her a concussion. I have been challenged by an associate to investigate Ray Epps, as to who he really is. First and foremost I am not a liberal or a far left supporter or a Joe Biden man. I am a registered Republican and up until the Jan 6th riot at the Capitol I was a Trump man. I have been on Fox News as a consultant and I have worked as a confidential informant (CI) for Homeland Security investigating the support network for the 9/11 hijackers in Sarasota Fl. All during the run up to the 2016 presidential election, from June to November, my blogs were almost excessively and exclusively devoted to pro Trump rhetoric. I worked for the Trump campaign at the State of Florida Trump HQ on State Street Sarasota Fl. I did background checks on individuals who posed a threat in any way to the staffers at Trump HQ. I helped Joe Gruters get elected to the Florida House of Rep in 2016 who was also Florida co-chairman of Trump's 2016 campaign. As an acknowledgment of my pro Trump efforts I was chosen to be one of the drivers in VP Mike Pence motorcade in Sarasota, all that went away after the Jan 6th, 2021 Capitol Riot supported by Donald Trump. Read the signs, pot stirrers like Fox news Tucker Carlson are paid big bucks to side with pro Trump conspiracies. Fox News president (and sexual predator) Roger Ailes was all in with Donald Trump and his run up for the presidency in 2016 and stayed with Trump 24/7 until he was ousted. Fox News talking heads have picked up the sword for Trump. Roger Ailes was a former GOP operative to candidates including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, of course Fox News is pro Trump.

UPDATE June 28th, 2022... WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's government has declared that American far-right groups the Proud Boys and The Base are terrorist organizations. The two groups join 18 others including Islamic State that have been given an official terrorist designation, making it illegal in New Zealand to fund, recruit or participate in the groups, and obligating authorities to take action against them. In the U.S., the State Department only lists foreign groups as terrorist entities. But the Proud Boys were last year named a terrorist group in Canada, while The Base has previously been declared a terrorist group in Britain, Canada and Australia.

"Conspiracy theory about Ray Epps as FBI confidential informant (CI) inserted at Jan 6th Capitol Riot dismissed": Ray Epps ain't no FBI confidential federal informant (CI), there is no evidence Epps was a government operative, he has longtime or former connections with the extremist group the Oath Keepers. Archives of emails sent by the Oath Keepers can be found online, soliciting attendees for events as far back as 2011. They describe Ray Epps as Arizona state chapter president of the Oath Keepers. Ray Epps attorney John Blischak said the substance of Epp's interview with the special House committee investigating the Capitol riot was to confirm Epps is telling the truth. When asked by The Arizona Republic about his client's involvement on Jan. 6, he said Epps was "merely present" that day. "He did not have any agenda to go into the Capitol or cause any violence whatsoever," Ray Epp's attorney said. The story of Ray Epps is a depressing chronicle of our times. Epps is a Trump supporter from Arizona who joined the crowd at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and now is at the center of a baseless conspiracy theory promoted by lawmakers and the former president. 

In 2011, Ray Epps was listed as president of the Arizona chapter of the Oath Keepers. Ray Epps appeared in a photo with Stewart Rhodes Oath Keepers founder at the Oath Keepers Freedom Summit, he ain't no FBI plant. In recent weeks, his lawyer tells The Fact Checker, he and his wife have received death threats. “He’s very upset,” said John W. Blischak, a Phoenix attorney. In 2011, Epps was listed as president of the Arizona chapter of the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009, is described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a large but loosely organized collection of anti-government extremists who are part of the broader anti-government ‘Patriot’ movement.” Ray Epps was the primary media contact for the group, granting interviews at the time. In that same year, Ray Epps appears in a photo with Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers national group’s founder and leader, when Rhodes spoke at a dinner hosted by the chapter. On NBC Face the Nation this morn, Sunday June 12, Rep Adam Kinzinger serving as the U.S. Rep for Illinois's 16th congressional district and a Republican went on to dismiss all claims and the nonsense that Ray Epps was a FBI informant. Ray Epps contacted the FBI tip line after seeing his image on a list of suspects and cooperated with the FBI and the Department of Justice, that is why he was removed from the suspect list! Recordings released to defense lawyers directly challenge assertions by prominent Republicans that an Arizona man named Ray Epps was a federal confidential informant and helped start the Capitol riot Jan 6th. Just two days after the attack, when Mr. Epps saw himself on a list of suspects from Jan. 6, he called an F.B.I. tip line and told investigators that he had tried to calm down a protestor/rioter when they spoke, according to three people who have heard a recording of the call. Mr. Epps went on to say that he explained to Ryan Samsel that the police outside the building were merely doing their jobs, the people said. “He came up to me and he said, ‘Dude’ — his entire words were, ‘Relax, the cops are doing their job,” Ryan Samsel said. According to the people who have heard the recording of Mr. Epps, he told the F.B.I. during his call that instigators might have been in the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. But he explained that he was not one of them and did not suggest that anyone who might have encouraged the mob that day was working for the government. In the same interview, Ryan Samsel told the F.B.I. that another person in the crowd outside the Capitol, Joseph Biggs, a leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys, also pulled him aside on Jan 6th and spoke to him just before he confronted the officers. While Joseph Biggs has denied the account, Ryan Samsel told investigators that Mr. Biggs encouraged him to push at the barricades and that when he hesitated, the Proud Boys leader flashed a gun, questioned his manhood and repeated his request.


Ryan Samsel an accused January 6 insurrectionist who’s facing charges for allegedly attacking officer Caroline Edwards during the Capitol riot on Jan 6th has a history of “choking and beating women to the point of loss of consciousness,” according to federal prosecutors. Ryan Samsel, has alleged that Joseph Biggs pressured him to start pushing down the barricades. Caroline Edwards described seeing Joseph Biggs and Ryan Samsel talking right before the crowd approached the barricades. She said a few officers began holding onto the bike rack barriers to try to maintain them. “I felt the bike rack come on top of my head, and I was pushed backwards, and my foot caught the stair behind me, and my chin hit the handrail and at that point I had blacked out, but the back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.” Ryan Samsel’s record of violent assault and domestic violence, dating back to 2006, was brought to light in court documents filed earlier this week as part of the government’s argument for why he should remain in jail pending the outcome of the trial. Ryan Samsel has been convicted on charges linked to attacking his pregnant girlfriend. Prosecutors said he smashed a hot pizza in her face, beat her up, threw her into a canal, and held her head under water. She escaped from him and ran barefoot through the street until she saw a parked police vehicle and “desperately tried to open the door” until the officer saw her and unlocked it so she could get in. Years later, another woman said that Samsel had choked her to the point of unconsciousness on several occasions, raped her, and broken into her house multiple times to attack her. She obtained a restraining order against him, but said he had violated it multiple times. Samsel, 38, from Bristol, Pennsylvania, was seen in video footage from January 6 wearing a red MAGA hat and standing on the front lines of rioters as they pushed their way past rows of Capitol police. Prosecutors say that he shoved female Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, causing her to bash her head into the ground, leaving her “semiconscious.” Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards later blacked out, and was treated for a concussion at a hospital. Prominent Republicans — including former President Donald J. Trump — have for months promoted a conspiracy theory that an Arizona man named Ray Epps was a federal informant who helped to instigate the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pure nonsense. The claims, made in congressional hearing rooms, on Fox News and at Mr. Trump’s political rallies, have largely been based on a video taken just before violence erupted at the Capitol, showing Mr. Epps at the barricades outside the building whispering into the ear of a man named Ryan Samsel. 

Within moments of the brief exchange with Mr Epps, Mr. Samsel, a Pennsylvania barber with long criminal history, can be seen moving forward and confronting the Capitol police in what amounted to the tipping point of the riot and injuring Capitol cop Caroline Edwards. Joseph Biggs, the Florida leader of the extremist group Proud Boys, is seen in the footage. He has been charged with seditious conspiracy for his role in the insurrection, which included him calling for a “revolution” and overtaking the Capitol. Caroline Edwards testified Samsel and Biggs conferred before she was attacked. In 2009, for example, Ryan Samsel was apparently convicted of assault and reckless endangerment when he held a woman against her will for five hours, choked her to the point of unconsciousness, beat her up, and chipped her teeth. Despite lacking proof for their claims, many Republicans have surmised that Mr. Epps instructed Mr. Samsel to antagonize the officers, not true. They have also pushed the notion that because Mr. Epps has not been arrested, he must have been working for the government. The recordings of Mr. Epps and Mr. Samsel were released by the government last week as a discovery disclosure to scores of defense lawyers representing people charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol attack. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment on why prosecutors have held on to the material so long and decided not to make it public. The conspiracy about Ray Epps, reportedly an Arizona man who said he traveled to Washington for former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally outside the White House, which began shortly before a mob of his supporters invaded the Capitol. “The select committee has interviewed Mr. Epps. Mr. Epps informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on January 5th or 6th or at any other time, and that he has never been an informant for the FBI or any other law enforcement agency,” the spokesperson said.

Capitol cop Caroline Edwards testifies on Jan 6th Riot it was hand to hand combat with Proud Boys and Oath Keepers Militia (THUGS). “It was something like what I’d seen out of movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Caroline Edwards said of the doomed effort to defend the Capitol from an onrushing mob of Trump supporters (THUGS). “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams that as a police officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle.” “It was something like what I’d seen out of movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she said of the doomed effort to defend the Capitol from an onrushing mob of Trump supporters. “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams that as a police officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”

Ryan Stephen Samsel, 38, of Bristol PA, DOB 1983, was charged in February 2021 with several crimes, including assaulting a federal officer Caroline Edwards on Jan 6th, 2021, obstructing law enforcement, and obstrucding a legal proceeding, after he was captured in videos and photos knocking over several officers as he attempted to storm the Capitol. Ryan Samsel, 38, of Bristol PA had been living with an Aunt and Uncle, he has been held at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center (FDC) since Jan 6 2021. Defendant Samsel remains held without bond. Among the officers he assaulted was a female cop, who fell and hit her head on “the stairs behind her, resulting in a loss of consciousness,” according to a criminal complaint. A 2021 filing opposing his latest request to be released from jail pending trial alleges that the Capitol riot was hardly Samsel’s first instance of violence. Prosecutors say that since 2006 there’s been “a pattern of Samsel choking and beating women to the point of loss of consciousness, of many hospital visits for many victims, of chipped and missing teeth, and of Samsel even breaking into one victim’s home multiple times to assault her.”

Bill Warner Private Investigator Sarasota 941-926-1926 - Cheaters and Child Custody Cases,