From: https://www.revolver.news/2021/10/meet-ray-epps-the-fed-protected-provocateur-who-appears-to-have-led-the-very-first-1-6-attack-on-the-u-s-capitol/

Keywords: Ray Epps, John Earle Sullivan, Ryan Samsel, Stewart Rhodes, …

Meet Ray Epps: The Fed-Protected Provocateur Who Appears To Have Led The Very First 1/6 Attack On The U.S. Capitol

October 25, 2021 (12h ago)

In a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned AG Merrick Garland about a mysterious man, Ray Epps[i], instructing protesters to enter the US Capitol building on January 5, and who later shepherded crowds towards the Capitol on January 6.

The story of the mystery man, Ray Epps, featured in Rep. Massie’s video above is in fact far more shocking than even the good Congressman implies in the hearing. It’s a story so strange, and so scandalous at every turn, that it threatens to shatter the entire official narrative of the “Capitol Breach” and expose yet another dimension of proactive federal involvement in the so-called “insurrection” of January 6th.

If Revolver News’s previous reporting points to a proactive role of the federal government in relation to the conspiracy cases against Oath Keepers [24 instances in this doc] and Proud Boys, the Ray Epps story that follows suggests a similar, yet more egregious, explicit, direct and immediate degree of federal involvement in the breach of the Capitol itself.

Here is a transcript of Thomas Massie’s exchange with the Attorney General, just in case you skipped past the video above.

Rep. Massie: As far as we can determine, the individual who was saying he’ll probably go to jail, he’ll probably be arrested, but they need to go into the Capitol the next day, is then directing people into the Capitol the next day, is then the next day directing people to the Capitol. And as far as we can find. You said this is one of the most sweeping in history. Have you seen that video, or those frames from that video?

AG Garland: So as I said at the outset, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not comment on pending investigations, and particularly not to comment on particular scenes or particular individuals.

Rep. Massie: I was hoping today to give you an opportunity to put to rest the concerns that people have that there were federal agents or assets of the federal government present on January 5 and January 6. Can you tell us, without talking about particular incidents or particular videos, how many agents or assets of the federal government were present on January 6, whether they agitated to go into the Capitol, and if any of them did?

AG Garland: So I’m not going to violate this norm of, uh, of, of, of, the rule of law.

[Looks down and away]

I’m not going to comment on an investigation that’s ongoing.

There is good reason why AG Garland ran from Massie’s question faster than he could find words — and why he couldn’t even keep eye contact as he was dodging Massie’s gaze.

After months of research, Revolver’s investigative reporting team can now reveal that Ray Epps appears to be among the primary orchestrators of the very first breach of the Capitol’s police barricades at 12:50pm on January 6. Epps appears to have led the “breach team” that committed the very first illegal acts on that fateful day. What’s more, Epps and his “breach team” did all their dirty work with 10 minutes still remaining in President Trump’s National Mall speech, and with the vast majority of Trump supporters still 30 minutes away from the Capitol.

Secondly, Revolver also determined, and will prove below, that the the FBI stealthily removed Ray Epps from its Capitol Violence Most Wanted List on July 1, just one day after Revolver exposed the inexplicable and puzzlesome FBI protection of known Epps associate and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes[ii] [32 instances in this doc]. July 1 was also just one day after separate New York Times report amplified a glaring, falsifiable lie about Epps’s role in the events of January 6.

Lastly, Ray Epps appears to have worked alongside several individuals — many of them suspiciously unindicted — to carry out a breach of the police barricades that induced a subsequent flood of unsuspecting MAGA protesters to unwittingly trespass on Capitol restricted grounds and place themselves in legal jeopardy.

Corroborating Ray Epps’s Identity

Identifying the individual in Thomas Massie’s video as Ray Epps was a surprisingly quick and easy task for the Internet.

It took less than a week after January 6 for online researchers to track Epps down and confirm his identity. Researchers uncovered his personal Facebook profile, where Epps shared his life story on Mark Zuckerberg’s social media app, under his real name.

On Facebook, Epps posted photos of himself boating, on horseback, and bear-hunting with a crossbow.

That’s a pretty big bear to hunt with a crossbow. And in many respects, Epps is quite an impressive figure. He served in the US Marines and ultimately worked his way up to full Marine Sergeant, according to his previous public title “SGT USMC” (Sergeant, US Marine Corp) and his private Facebook nostalgic musings.

Researchers went on to locate Epps’s ranch in Arizona, his events business, his private holding company, along with every publicly discoverable record imaginable. They even found his Facebook likes, religious affiliation, and preferred insurance agents and plumbing services, which we’ll avoid reporting in the interest of sparing unnecessary private details.

Epps, who grew up in Arizona and still lives there today, was contacted directly by local newspaper Arizona Central on January 11 — less than a week after January 6, and just three days after Epps was added to the FBI Most Wanted List, a detail upon which we will elaborate later on in this report.

AZ Central, which published its contemporaneous article on Epps under the original headline, In video, Trump supporter says, ‘We need to go into the Capitol’, first confirms his attendance at the Capitol protest:

A Queen Creek man who acknowledges he was in Washington, D.C., for last week’s rally by President Donald Trump also appears to be shown in videos taken the night before talking about plans to go inside the U.S. Capitol.

In one video that has been widely viewed on Twitter, he can be heard saying, “I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested. I’ll say it. We need to go into the Capitol.”

Ray Epps told The Arizona Republic in a brief telephone interview Monday that he had traveled to the capital for the event, and that he had been advised by an attorney not to speak about it.

“I think the truth needs to get out,” he said.

A video online appears to show him saying, “We’re here to defend the Constitution” and “We need to go into the Capitol.

Epps didn’t stop at simply confirming his presence at the Capitol. Epps effectively corroborated on record that he was the exact same man telling Trump supporters they needed to go inside the Capitol.

Asked about it, he first told The Republic he would need to see the video. When read a transcript of the comments, he said, “The only thing that meant is we would go in the doors like everyone else. It was totally, totally wrong the way they went in.” [AZ Central]

The video below compiles shortened versions of five separate exchanges involving Epps at various hours during the night of January 5 and afternoon of January 6.

As you process the video above and the information to follow, it is important to keep in mind: Ray Epps is a free man. He has never been arrested or charged. Nearly 10 months after January 6, the FBI and Justice Department still refuse to comment on whether Epps has ever been served a search warrant.

But we do know that at least rank-and-file FBI investigators were intensely interested in Ray Epps in the immediate aftermath of January 6.

By January 8, the FBI Capitol Violence Most Wanted List featured a big fat friendly face shot of Ray Epps. The FBI’s Washington Field Office, in a tweet the same day, called for the public’s help in identifying Epps. Epps, dressed in full camo with a bright red “Trump” hat, is the FBI’s “Suspect 16” in the bottom-left quadrant of both images reproduced below:

For your edification, we matched FBI Suspect Photo #16 to the timestamp 0:48 of the full barricade breach source video:

There are currently 486 suspects in the FBI’s Capitol Violence Most Wanted list. The fact that Ray Epps was one of the first 20 suspects the FBI ever publicly featured on its “be on the lookout” boards and “Most Wanted” lists reveals just how high a priority the FBI’s rank-and-file investigators considered Epps to be.

So to recap, on January 8, the FBI begged the public’s help to identify the mysterious “Person #16.”

Then, a funny thing happened: the public actually delivered.

Initially, swarms of left-wing researcher accounts, Antifa groups, and partisan non-profits leapt into Crowdsourced Internet Detective mode. They assigned Epps’s identity various hashtags and tracked his movements throughout January 5-6. The primary three hashtags assigned to Epps were:

· #CrowdControl, because of the way Epps was always controlling every crowd he was a part of [this hashtag] on both January 5 and January 6;

· #FedBoomer, because of the shocking video (analyzed below) of Epps being shouted down as a “Fed” by Trump supporters for proposing to enter the Capitol [he was a part of this hashtag]; and

· #BigMagaCamo, which came to be Epps’s final, neutral descriptor name. It is under the #BigMagaCamo moniker that virtually all left-wing databases, shared Google spreadsheets and multimedia archives retain most of their Ray Epps information.

Within days of the riot at the Capitol, archives quickly swelled with videos and images of Epps.

Ray Epps played two roles in virtually every encounter during his Commando Capitol Tour on January 6.

First, Epps instructed his commandos and the crowds at his attention to rush into the Capitol and let nothing stop them.

Second, Epps assiduously protected cops and law enforcement so no local or federal officers would be harmed during the precision breaches.

If you want to see what this walking philosophical paradox looks like in action, here’s a clip of Epps patrolling the very front police lines of the Capitol’s Western Plaza at approximately 3:15 p.m at the height of the day’s mania — nearly two and a half hours after Epps and his “breach team” appeared to coordinate the toppling of the Capitol’s East-side police barricades. This was also nearly a full hour after the US Capitol building itself had already been breached. With Epps’s stated mission of breaching the Capitol accomplished, and hundreds of Trump supporters already inside, Epps’s mission magically switched to calming the crowd down, assuring them “We already made our point,” and ensuring that no more of his apparently fellow officers got hurt that afternoon:

So on January 8, 2021, the FBI begged the public for information regarding the identity of Suspect 16, Ray Epps, and even offered a cash reward.

The public obliged, and in less than three days, Ray Epps was identified as Suspect 16. Researchers corroborated his identity with troves of unassailable direct evidence, including an effective confession from Epps himself to his own local newspaper.

Then, for nearly six months, amidst the biggest manhunt in American history, the FBI did nothing with this information. As the FBI did nothing on Epps, it was simultaneously investigating, arresting, raiding and imprisoning hundreds of completely benign MAGA moms and social media trolls — mostly for minor misdemeanor trespassing charges.

Then, on July 1, between the hours of 3:37 a.m. and 5:55 p.m., the FBI finally took action on Ray Epps. But not to prosecute him, or to announce a sweeping investigation or FBI SWAT raid on Epps’s house for all of his phones and electronics. Instead, someone at the FBI quietly and stealthily purged every trace of Ray Epps from the Capitol Riots Most Wanted database.

Using the Wayback Machine from archive.org, we see that from January 8, 2021 until 3:37 a.m. on July 1, every archived version of the FBI.gov website shows Ray Epps as Suspect 16. The below photo is just a snapshot sample from February 16, 2021 — but users can view the Web Archive themselves to witness the Ray Epps purge occurring sometime between 3:37 a.m. and 5:55 p.m. on July 1. That would be during the FBI workday.

On, July 1, Ray Epps, Suspect 16, was disappeared, as if he never existed.

Now let’s be clear: Ray Epps was not purged because he was arrested. If Epps was arrested, the FBI Wanted List would have the caption “ARRESTED” affixed to his picture, as you can plainly see is done for all other arrested suspects in the database itself.

Further, the searchable Justive.Gov Capitol Breach Cases database confirms there are no case dockets or filings for any “Epps” at all.

To anyone checking the January 6 FBI Most Wanted List today, “Suspect 16” is just a ghost. Only obsessive, fastidious Wayback Machine users spending hours pouring through archived screenshots could ever forensically confirm Ray Epps was ever really a Wanted Man.

The question then arises: what prompted the FBI’s six-month slumber on Epps, and then their sudden purger on July 1?

Well, they panicked. Two major media reports (discussed below) came out on June 30, each of which touched the Ray Epps “Third Rail” from different angles, and the FBI likely realized it was no longer safe to maintain a digital record acknowledging they ever knew who this guy was. Then, the FBI hoped no one would notice the purged files, or would either politely look away or actively assist with their cover-up.

Let’s spell out the chronology a bit more before discussing the two pieces that likely prompted the FBI’s freakout.

First, while left-wing and Antifa accounts had been all over Ray Epps since Week 1, Epps did not come to right-wing and pro-Trump researchers’ attention until June 17, when a viral Twitter thread highlighted a series of shocking, verifiable livestream video timestamps where Epps instructed Trump supporters to go into the Capitol and then was shouted down on suspicions he was a Federal agent.

Just three days prior to the publication of the Epps Twitter thread, Revolver published a June 14 report on FBI operatives embedded within the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on January 6th, which created a national narrative igniting a firestorm around the issue.

With Revolver’s piece catching national attention, the Epps Twitter clips posted on June 17 intensified right-wing interest in how it could be possible that Epps remained unindicted. After all, the Justice Department, in its hundreds of arrests, claims to still be stumped by the lack of evidence that anyone had actually pre-planned the storming of the Capitol.

On June 30th, the New York Times published a piece entitled Inside the Capitol Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation. This is the first of the two aforementioned June 30th publications that caused major problems for the FBI’s narrative.

The New York Times analysis purported to be “the official record” of what happened at the Capitol that day. But there were a few problems with “the official record” produced by the New York Times. For one, it told an outright lie about Ray Epps:

One of the biggest questions hanging over the aftermath of Jan. 6 was whether the riot was planned and carried out by organized groups.

By identifying and tracking key players throughout the day, we found that most — even some at the forefront of the action — were ardent, but disorganized Trump supporters swept up in the moment and acting individually.

The first person to enter the Capitol building, for example, was a 43-year-old husband and father from Kentucky named Michael Sparks. He has no known affiliation with any organized groups. Ray Epps, an Arizona man seen in widely-circulated videos telling Trump supporters on multiple occasions to go into the Capitol, also seemed to have acted on his own.

The NYT appears to be running cover for the FBI by referencing Epps’s appearance in “widely-circulated videos” and concluding that he “seemed to have acted on his own.”

This media malpractice NYT cover-up lie could not be further from the truth.

Below, we see Epps give explicit instructions, mere minutes before the very first breach of a police barricade on January 6. He gives these instructions to a still-unindicted, still “FBI Wanted” ex-Marine commando nicknamed “MaroonPB[iii]” who is antagonizing police officers with a blazing bullhorn.

After receiving instructions from Epps, MaroonPB replies, “Noted” — which, last we checked, means “stipulated”, “understood” or “agreed.” This is an explicit verbal agreement between two or more people — the opposite of the NYT’s claim that Epps “acted on his own.”

In case it wasn’t clear enough already, Epps also says “One more thing” — stipulating he gave the man a set of instructions before adding others. And those next instructions were, “When we go in, leave this here,” likely in reference to MaroonPB’s cannister of bear spray.

Amazingly, on June 30th, the NYT’s “Insurrection” obsessives, trying to decipher a secret “dog whistle” between President Trump, Stephen Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and Roger Stone and the tens of thousands of MAGA protesters in DC that day, were now poking their own eyes out to avoid acknowledging actual coordination, caught on tape, between unindicted persons apparently orchestrating the opening act of the Capitol attack.

In any case, the NYT story must have created a real public relations headache for the FBI. How could the New York Times tell tens of millions of people that Epps was a key instigator in the “Makeup of the Mob” if the FBI had already known about Epps for 6+ months and even had his mugshot on the Most Wanted list? Perhaps the Times would have done the FBI a much bigger favor if they had simply not referred to Epps at all.

Could it be that the FBI decided they’d just purge Epps from the list, never tell anyone, and pretend they had never seen all the videotapes, the images, the message boards, the newspaper confession, and so on? As long as no one blew up Ray Epps’s name any further, the whole thing might blow over.

Also on June 30th, Revolver published a bombshell report exploring the extraordinary degree of federal protection afforded to founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, a man named Stewart Rhodes. This is the second of the aforementioned two pieces that likely triggered the FBI’s freakout.

A recent Revolver update on the inexplicable FBI protection of Stewart Rhodes recaps the strange situation.

Prosecutors argue it was:

· Rhodes who established the Oath Keepers conspiracy;

· Rhodes who recruited people into the conspiracy;

· Rhodes who organized and gave key instructions to the conspirators;

· Rhodes who suggested the use of illegal weapons such as “collapsible batons”;

· Rhodes who activated the conspiracy in real-time on January 6 via text messages and phone calls to his lieutenants from 1:38 – 2:40 p.m..;

· Rhodes who waited on the Capitol steps for the completion of the conspiracy from approximately 3:30-4:00 p.m..; and

· Rhodes who later congratulated everyone on a conspiracy well done at 7:14 p.m.

Furthermore,

1. The Oath Keepers indictment cites 18 phone calls as evidence of coordination of a common conspiracy (for those following along, these calls are in paragraphs 105, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 118, 122, 123, 125, 126, 130, 134, 135, 138, 174, 175, and 176).

2. Stewart Rhodes is the person either calling or being called in 10 of these 18 calls. Put another way: Rhodes makes or receives 55% of all phone calls in a massive conspiracy case spanning 16 defendants.

3. When you combine phone calls involving Rhodes and those involving the mysteriously unindicted Person Ten, who Rhodes appointed his ground commander for the day, that number rises to 100% of all phone calls.

So what exactly does the curious case of Stewart Rhodes have to do with Ray Epps?

Students of FBI history should quickly absorb the lesson that infiltrating Feds are like roaches: whenever you spot one, it is guaranteed there are dozens others nearby. Feds simply never, ever, operate alone. This is how you end up with at least 12 FBI informants in a tiny “right-wing” Michigan militia plot from October 2020 (that’s just informants, not even agents), 15 informants in the “right-wing” 2016 Malheur plot, dozens in the 2014 Bundy Ranch affair — including six FBI undercover agents posing as fake documentarians shooting a fake documentary — and the list goes on.

You’ll be shocked, then, to learn that the Oath Keepers sport an eye-poppingly long history of FBI infiltration.

And lo and below[behold], Ray Epps and Oath Keepers kingpin Stewart Rhodes are old pals in the organization. In fact, Stewart Rhodes was Ray Epps’s old boss. Back in 2011-2012, Epps was the Arizona state chapter leader of the Oath Keepers — the biggest Oath Keepers chapter in the country — while Rhodes was and remains the national leader. (See, e.g., archived proof of Epps as Arizona Oath Keeper President here, here and here.) Reason Magazine’s Radley Balko even interviewed Ray Epps while Epps was running the Arizona Oath Keepers a decade ago:

This week I also spoke with Ray Epps, a retired Marine sergeant from Mesa, Arizona and president of the Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, the controversial organization of police and military personnel who have vowed not to enforce laws they believe are unconstitutional. After hearing about Guerena’s death, Epps drove to Tucson to investigate.

Oddly, Stewart Rhodes’s website OathKeepers.org deleted several historical blog posts featuring events run by Ray Epps, where Epps was listed as both President and Press Contact.

The Wayback Machine’s automatic archiving process suggests Stewart Rhodes’s OathKeepers.org posts concerning Ray Epps were effectively dormant from 2011 until 2021. Then, at approximately 3 p.m. on January 27, 2021, there is an update showing the page had been 404’d.

January 27 is less than three weeks after Ray Epps was added to the FBI’s January 6 Most Wanted List. January 27 is also the same day the very first criminal indictment against the Oath Keepers was unsealed and made available to the public.

Here you can see Ray Epps and Stewart Rhodes marching side by side at a march they organized, while Epps was in charge of Arizona. They are the duo chatting with each other immediately after the flagbearers:

Here you can see Ray Epps and Stewart Rhodes together at a memorial service.

And here you can see a joint hometown buffet the duo hosted in Arizona.

While a precise timeline of Epps’s Oath Keeper relationship is not yet known, several data points are revealing.

Public property records show Ray Epps lived in Arizona in 2009, and returned to Arizona in 2011. For a brief period in 2010, Epps appeared to maintain a residence in Las Vegas, Nevada. Given that this is exactly where Stewart Rhodes was living at the time, and that Epps returned to Arizona to become Stewart Rhodes’s top lieutenant as President of the Oath Keepers’ largest state chapter, Arizona, it seems quite plausible that Epps and Rhodes were early associates at the very outset of the Oath Keepers as an organization.

Now, let’s tell the story of Ray Epp’s journey through the 1/6 universe.

Epps’s Actions On January 5

We will now review a series of clips which run from approximately 10:30 p.m.- midnight on the evening of January 5. The scenes depicted in the following clips all occurred in the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza at 16th St NW in DC — just blocks from the White House.

There, Trump supporters from around the country who had flown in for the protest gathered together. They had just been separated from Antifa/BLM counter-protesters, some of whom had been violently attacking Trump supporters that strayed from the main crowd. Some Trump supporters, including isolated women, were beaten senseless and bloody on the street, and the crowd was particularly agitated as a result. You’ll hear the forthcoming clip begin with a Trump supporter saying “They’re not Americans, they’re terrorists,” referring to the Antifa/BLM group that attacked them.

There was a very West Side Story feel to the two gangs being separated by a police line. But on the Trump side, Ray Epps held court, and he instructed the Trump crowd to redirect their energies away from counter-protesters, and join his plot to go inside the Capitol the next day instead.

The Trump crowd immediately identified Epps’s proposal to storm the Capitol as something only a Fed would propose. This freeze frame of MAGA faithful pointing fingers at Epps while calling him a Fed is as telling as it is humorous:

January 6, after all, was scheduled as a Trump rally. In the 323 rallies before Trump took office, and the 168 rallies thereafter, there had never been a single instance of rioting or pre-planned illegal activity.

Lawbreaking was 0 for 491 at Trump rallies before January 6.

Perhaps this extraordinarily track record of physical restraint explains why Epps’s arrest-bait proposal stood out like a sore thumb, and why he was quickly shouted down.

But that above encounter was not the first time on January 5 that Epps held court in a crowded gathering, demanding everyone in earshot rush the Capitol the next day. In the following clip, from slightly earlier in the evening, Epps gives the same exact spiel, almost as if his lines were practiced and rehearsed. Note how Epps deploys the same preface of “I probably shouldn’t say this because I’ll probably get arrested” before making his same Capitol-invasion pitch, and delivers the same theatrical pause after “in” when he tells them: “We need to go in to the Capitol.”

In every instance, Epps barges into other people’s conversations, wholly unwanted, to make his appeal.

Trump supporters became so hostile towards Epps that they became openly disrespectful. This disrespect, in turn, elicited a sympathetic rejoinder from other Trump supporters, who appealed that Epps should be “thanked for his service.” After all, Ray Epps had been telling everyone within earshot that night that he had been a Sergeant in the Marines — which naturally appeals to the charity and gratitude that most Trump supporters extend toward any man or woman who has served the country in uniform.

Notably, reverence towards military sergeants and elite commandos induces an “obedience” effect in normal citizens looking for leadership on who to follow and what to do in the midst of a chaotic situation. Oath Keeper and Army Green Beret veteran Jeremy Brown, whose incredible and scandalous arrest Revolver covered in a previous report, was solicited by federal agents just weeks before January, and was offered a cash reward to become a confidential FBI informant to turn on the Oath Keepers. Below, Brown provides audio from his recorded agents meeting, and then explains the “obedience” effect he knew his becoming an informant would have induced on those around him.

And this brings us back to Marine Sergeant Ray Epps. Some protesters in the plaza were mad at Biden. Some were mad at BLM and Antifa. Some were mad at George Soros. Some were mad about Covid restrictions. Some were mad about election fraud. Some weren’t even mad — they just loved Trump and thought the event looked fun.

Yet Epps was insistent that everyone stay focused on a common mission: storming the Capitol. On multiple livestreams, Epps moves from group to group throughout the plaza, barging in and insisting everyone “stay focused” on “what we’re here for” — which he would then explain meant going inside the US Capitol building. When asked to give a reason for his crazy plot, Epps would continually fall back on his catch-all rationale: “It’s about the Constitution.”

In another clip, a young woman with a bullhorn addresses the Trump crowds’ grievances with various left-wing adversaries, including BLM, George Soros, and Covid tyranny. At that moment, Epps rushes in to stop and refocus her towards — you guessed it — storming the Capitol. This sequence immediately precedes the “Fed! Fed! Fed!” shout-down earlier, so while some of the action occurs off-camera in this livestream, you can see the context of how Epps was interacting with the crowd. Also below, note how Epps insisted on just “one minute” to make his pitch, but the crowd, already agitated with him, said they would only give him “30 seconds.”

This same cycle repeated itself again and again during Epps’s 90-minute excursion in the plaza, as he moved from group to group, getting them “focused” on the mission for the next day. Whenever a different speaker or conversationalist aired a different grievance against any MAGA adversary, Epps would insist: “We’re here for another reason.”

Here’s another example:

Taking a closer look at the above clip, some careful readers might note that the man standing next to Ray Epps, who appears to say Epps sounded like “some Undercover Agent type shit,” is a man named John Sullivan.[iv]

Sullivan is an interesting character in his own right and germane to the story at large.

In the aftermath of 1/6, many Republicans were quick to blame the most incendiary and violent elements of 1/6 on Antifa or BLM. To support their hunch, Republicans especially cited the stand-out anecdote of John Sullivan.

John Sullivan was the very peculiar character who filmed the vivid scene of Ashli Babbitt’s shocking death. As Babbitt lay bloody, helpless, and slowly dying, draped in a Trump 2020 flag, Sullivan’s high resolution livestream served as the world’s focal lens on the apex tragedy of the day’s events.

The first videos you likely saw of Babbitt’s death had a watermark in the bottom right reading “Jayden X.” The watermark is still present in the iconic “broken glass” photo that was circulated widely on network news reports.

“Jayden X” is one of several noms de plume of John Sullivan.

Conservative politicians and MAGA supporters were quick to make the case that John Sullivan was an Antifa activist. That left-wing radical fixation dominated, for example, the March 3, 2021 Senate investigation hearing.

Indeed, John Sullivan had purported to be a BLM/Antifa activist in at least two major US cities throughout 2020 before donning a MAGA hat and raiding the Capitol on January 6. Naturally, the MAGA world was shocked a hardcore left-wing riot-activist later turn-up inside the US Capitol building, recording an HD livestream, while shouting such things as “Let’s burn this shit down,” “We did this shit,” and “We took this shit.” Security guards also accused Sullivan of defacing statues while inside the Capitol.

John Sullivan even smashed a window of the Capitol — perhaps by accident — while inside:

And despite being detained on January 6 and questioned for an hour by both the Metropolitan PD and the FBI, John Sullivan was inexplicably released that very night.

But John Sullivan was not exactly a BLM or Antifa activist in good standing. Amazingly, Sullivan had been kicked out of and permanently banned from multiple Antifa communities because Antifa cell leaders suspected John Sullivan of being an undercover FBI-handled agent provocateur sent to land them in jail.

Republicans, despite being brutalized repeatedly by sociopathically corrupt FBI factions within the counterintelligence bureau at least dozens of times during Trump’s tenure in office, never seemed to ask themselves, until Revolver’s June 14 report, this question: What if the provocateurs, infiltrators and escalators of illegal activities weren’t coming from Antifa or BLM? What if they were coming straight from the FBI?

As Revolver has repeatedly stressed: unlike Antifa or BLM, the FBI has actually done all of this before.

So to recap, months before January 6, John Sullivan was banned from Antifa groups on suspicions of being a fed:

You can read the above entire thread here.

In it, the pseudonymous author succinctly lists out typical behavioral patterns of infiltrators/agents provocateurs to watch out for, which served as the basis for ousting John Sullivan:

1. New to the community, yet ignores existing safety standards. Eager to take on sudden leadership roles.

2. Burned bridges or untraceable ties from prior communities. Lacking references.

3. Moves quickly through different orgs and leaves a wake of discourse or drama.

4. Charismatic/zealous, but acts without conviction.

5. Grandiose plans of actions that are highly illegal/risky, but they want YOU to do it.

6. Gravitates towards other abusers and grifters.

7. Poor opsec/infosec, lack of interest in protecting comrades’ anonymity.

8. Suspicious social media presence – new accounts, high # of follower w/ low engagement, or circular engagement within a few similar accounts.

9. Spending doesn’t match stated source of income.

10. Lashes out and makes accusations when confronted.

11. Prioritizing personal financial or reputational gain. Grifting/profiteering, lack of transparency, centering their own story or “brand.” Eager to talk to press.

12. [P]olice, or fed connections (personal, professional, familial).

All twelve of these red flags apply to key figures in the 1/6 story who are far more significant than John Sullivan. Ten of these twelve red flags apply to Ray Epps, and virtually all of them appear to apply to Ray Epps’s former Oath Keeper boss, the still-unindicted, still-uninvestigated, still FBI-protected Stewart Rhodes.

Sullivan also claimed to be a member of the media documenting the events of January 6th. CNN and NBC even paid him tens of thousands for his footage. It is worth remembering, however, that the FBI has a rather shocking history of deploying undercover agents and assets to pose as fake documentarians, to shoot fake “documentaries” and fake “exclusive footage” during high-profile right-wing protests and events.

For example, the high-profile Bundy Family Ranch stand-off in April 2014, Stewart Rhodes and his Oath Keepers rocketed to national celebrity for leading the “scouts-out” perimeter of the ranch, which was the buffer zone between the Bundy family and the FBI. But unbeknownst to the Bunch ranchers where the Oath Keepers arrived, the FBI had sent in a fake documentary crew, with real Feds, shooting real footage, but with a fake documentary purpose — as a means of securing exclusive access, incriminating interviews and evidence about the Bundy Ranch participants:

Now, here in the comforts of the Bellagio, six documentary filmmakers trained bright lights and high-definition cameras on Ryan [Bundy]. They wanted to ask about the standoff. Wearing a cowboy hat, Ryan fidgeted before the cameras. He had told this story before; that wasn’t the reason for his nerves…

[S]omething seemed off to Ryan about this interview in the Bellagio. While the family’s newfound fame had attracted fresh supporters to their cause, it had also inspired suspicion. With a federal investigation looming, who among these new faces could they really trust?

Among the more recent figures in the Bundy orbit was this mysterious documentary film crew. The director, Charles Johnson, was middle-aged, with a silver goatee, slicked-back hair, and a thick southern accent. His assistant, who identified herself as Anna, was tall and blond. A website for their company, Longbow Productions, listed an address in Nashville, Tennessee, but the Bundys could find no previous examples of their work.

As the cameras recorded, Ryan’s skepticism was plain. At times, his right eye rolled back into his head, the result of a childhood accident that paralyzed half of his face, and his gaze shifted to figures outside the shot. “There’s been a lot of red flags in the community about Longbow Productions,” one of his companions explained to the film crew. “No bullshit, straight talk. … It’s almost like you’re trying to make us incriminate ourselves.”

With a conspicuously placed copy of the U.S. Constitution poking out of his left breast pocket, Ryan turned his gaze to Johnson.

“We really do want to work with you, if that’s really what’s going on,” he said. But his family needed to know, “Is this just a mole project to garner information that will then be given to the feds?”

Johnson insisted the project was a legitimate endeavor. “I want a truthful documentary.”

“Alrighty,” Ryan said. “Let’s proceed.”

“Quiet on the set,” Johnson told his crew.

Ryan should have trusted his instincts. Johnson and his colleagues were not documentarians. They were undercover FBI agents posing as filmmakers. By the time they sat down with Ryan, Johnson and his team had spent eight months traveling to at least five states to film interviews with nearly two dozen people about the Bundy standoff, all part of an FBI effort to build criminal cases against the Bundys and their supporters.

The story of the FBI’s fake documentary crew, revealed in more than 100 hours of video and audio recordings obtained by The Intercept, offers an unprecedented window into how federal law enforcement agents impersonate journalists to gain access to criminal suspects. The raw material produced by the FBI was presented under seal in the U.S. District Court in Nevada, where Ryan Bundy, his father, Cliven, and his brothers, as well as more than a dozen supporters, were charged with conspiracy, assault, weapons offenses, and other crimes related to their standoff with the government. [Intercept]

Note the similarities:

· The same phenomenon of 100s of hours of mystery footage kept under seal and not being released;

· The same criminal charges the FBI was seeking (conspiracy to obstruct a federal proceeding);

· The same political group being targeted (constitutional conservatives, right-wing militias and patriot groups); and

· Even the very same right-wing agent provocateur “militia leaders” (e.g., Stewart Rhodes) who organized armed resistance paramilitaries in both cases but magically evaded all Justice Department attention in both aftermaths.

Right now, John Sullivan is facing wrist-slap charges, was released immediately without bail. He then quickly breached those release conditions, but was given a highly unusual free pass by the judge.

It’s hard to find a genuinely peaceful MAGA protester who has been treated so kindly by the Justice Department. For example, the aforementioned Oath Keeper and Green Beret veteran Jeremy Brown is being held behind bars, his bail denied until trial, simply for standing 100 feet too close to the Capitol steps. To reiterate, Brown — unlike John Sullivan — never even went inside the Capitol on January 6.

Turning back to the Ray Epps – John Sullivan video clip above, it is remarkable to see Epps — a man kicked out of two group conversations by Trump supporters on accusations of being a Fed — and John Sullivan — a man kicked out of two cities by Antifa groups on accusations of being a Fed — sharing the same video frame, in the same group conversation, on the same night.

And in that clip, Epps proposes such cartoonishly illegal activities that even John Sullivan jokes Ray Epps is on “some undercover agent type shit.”

The simultaneous presence of both Epps and Sullivan at the same place, at the same time, in the exact same conversation circle, suggests the possibility these two were not there by accident, but rather were instructed or encouraged by handlers to go out and — as FBI Special Agent Impola instructed his assets in the Michigan Plot — “Maximize Attendance.”

Epps’s singular focus on storming the Capitol was as remarkable as it was out-of-step with the agenda of everyone around him.

In this clip, for instance, Ray Epps senses that some Trump supporters may be antagonizing police, and he rushes over to back them away. Later in the conversation, some Black Lives Matter members approach the crowd of Trump supporters, and Ray Epps makes the same pitch to the BLM supporters about their common purpose with Trump supporters, and the 1/6 protest being “about the Constitution.” Epps’s strange behavior, naturally, drew antagonism from some on the Trump side, who were confused as why Epps was kissing up to BLM.

Indeed, Ray Epps was a man on a mission. And that mission appears to involve not hurting cops or get in tangles with BLM and Antifa. That mission appears to be to get as many Trump supporters as possible to storm the Capitol. While a bit outside the chronology and embedded above, the following clip from approximately 3pm on January 6 is revealing in how it shows Epps — in full #CrowdControl mode — patrolling the police line to back Trump supporters off the officers. Epps curiously tells them, “we already did what we came here to do.”

Epps’s Actions On January 6: 12:24pm-12:50pm

Now we will take a look at the first known clip of Epps on January 6. This recording is taken at 12:24 p.m. with a GPS position at the Washington Monument. Given that President Trump spoke from 12:10 p.m. until 1:00 p.m., this puts Epps on the outside entrance to Trump’s National Mall speech as it was just beginning.

In this clip, Epps bellows that “After the speech, we are going to the Capitol. Where our problems are.” Before Epps departs for the Capitol himself, he wants to make sure he has done everything in his power to maximize attendance at the Capitol after President Trump’s speech. Note also how no one else around him, in the thousands in the crowd, is doing anything remotely provacateuring, or even mentioning the Capitol as a site of possible unrest.

Described below, Epps appears to have led the “breach team” that took down the very first police barricades of the day, overran the very first police officers, and opened the floodgates for thousands of Trump supporters to walk onto restricted Capitol grounds past the barricades. Because those barricades were quickly removed, and there was no other signage or reason to know that those ordinarily public grounds were restricted for the day, Ray Epps was part of the initial squad that led men like Jeremy Brown — charged for misdemeanor trespassing — to unwittingly walk into a booby trap.

At 12:24 p.m., Epps began walking eastward from the Washington Monument. The next public video of Epps shows him at the Capitol grounds’ East entrance at approximately 12:50 p.m., inching his way forward to the front of the police barricade line.

Remember: Trump’s speech didn’t even end until 1 p.m. The front line of the early Epps crowd would overrun the barricades while Trump — a 25-minute walk away from the Capitol — still had 10 minutes left in his speech. Since Trump’s speech started 10 minutes late, that means this early crowd could not have even listened to Donald Trump for more than a few minutes at the National Mall.

Epps’s Actions On January 6: 12:50pm – The Leader Of “Breach Team 6”

We now come to perhaps the two most important clips of this report: the footage that appears to depict Epps directing a number of men in the very first attack on the Capitol that fateful day.

Researchers refer to the gang who took orchestrated this kick-off attack as #BreachTeam6. The nickname is wordplay on the elite “Seal Team 6” said to have carried out the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Laden.

Researchers have assigned nicknames to all the main characters involved in Breach Team 6. Many, if not most, remain mysteriously unnamed, unidentified and unindicted ten months after the fact.

Our main character, Ray Epps, AKA #BigMAGACamo,appears to be the team leader of Breach Team 6 on the ground.

To be clear: the claim that this ~12:50 p.m. attack was the very first attack on January 6, kicking off the entire “riot,” is not a claim made by Revolver. It’s the claim made by the The New York Times, the Justice Department, and all other “official” pundits of the 1/6 commentariat.

The New York Times — always covering up the real story and misleading its readers in the most shocking ways possible — tells the story as if it starts with the pushing of the barricades by a young man named Ryan Samsel[v], who we will cover below:

And here’s the NYT’s written summary describing the Breach Team 6’s handiwork:

The eastern crowd had remained largely behind the barricades, but all that changed with the arrival of rioters from around the side of the building. This more violent group was the trigger that put the entire mob over the edge, spurring them to push easily through a line of officers and surround the Capitol on every front.

As you will see, this is an unconscionable act of deception by the New York Times in order to create a deceptively edited video timeline to support their demonstrably false claim that “Ray Epps… seemed to have acted on his own.”

In this clip, which we played above but will now be analyzed in depth, Ray Epps is providing instructions to a man the FBI still lists in its Most Wanted database as “Suspect 273.” Researchers give Suspect 273 the moniker “#MaroonPB”, as he is seen marching with Proud Boys both on January 6 and at the earlier December 12 and November 14 Stop The Steal rallies, and is wearing maroon during the Capitol raid.

In the below clip, the words of MaroonPB are depicted in white, and the words of Ray Epps are in yellow:

Just minutes later, Ryan Samsel will “kick off the riot” by being the first person to shove the police barricades. But just 2.6 seconds (yes, we timed it) before Samsel kicks off the January 6 riot, he lends his ear to Ray Epps, who whispers something in turn.

We will conclude our report with an in-depth analysis of these clips, and briefly tell the stories of “MaroonPB” and Ryan Samsel.

Ray Epps and MaroonPB

The still-unidentified man known as MaroonPB is no small player in the major events of January 6. According to the FBI, MaroonPB coordinates the breaches of both sides of the US Capitol building, directs members of his team into restricted areas, physically removes police barricades, and even runs around the US Capitol building, entering Senators’ offices, armed with bear mace the whole time. He penetrated the doors of the Capitol just seven minutes before Ashli Babbitt was shot, according to the FBI:

On January 6th, this individual can be seen communicating with others and initiating breach of the West side of the U.S. Capitol. He then moves to the East side to assist with the breach, moving barricades and directing people inside the restricted area. 273 enters into Capitol at approximately 2:38 PM at the East doors, seen with a can of mace/bear spray, and posing while holding Trump flag. Call 1-800-CALL-FBI or visit tips.fbi.gov to submit information.

This is all stipulated by the FBI, and he is on tape taking orders from Ray Epps just minutes before he kicks it all off. And yet the FBI has issued no arrests, and not even the announcement of a search warrant.

Here is a highlight video of MaroonPB’s incredible swath of illegal activities in tour of crazy at the US Capitol on January 6:

Let’s note a few things off the top:

Just like Ray Epps, MaroonPB repeatedly cites the exact same “It’s about the Constitution” line. We know from FBI FOIA records that the FBI masquerades with copies of Oath Keeper pocket constitutions for use by its agents and assets in militia infiltration operations, and both Epps and MaroonPB cite “the Constitution” with the same lackluster conviction — using the words as a nebulous conservative catch-all with no logical connection as to why a citizen should temporarily enter an off-limits federal building.

Just like Ray Epps, MaroonPB is ex-military. Both men are former Marines. Whereas Ray Epps was a Marine Sergeant, MaroonPB’s younger age suggests and subordinate role suggests that MaroonPB looked up to Ray Epps, and possibly even had a prior acquaintanceship related to their common military branch or common government network.

Also, note that MaroonPB seems to hop from breach to breach throughout January 6, being in the lead at multiple different breach locations the very minute they are happening for the first time — on both sides of the Capitol.

With all these actions and calls to invade the Capitol, MaroonPB is practically Ray Epps’s Mini-Me.

We have created a similar “Where’s Waldo” type compilation for Ray Epps here:

But perhaps the shocking fact about MaroonPB is this: It is inconceivable — one might say verging on genuinely impossible — that the FBI does not know who MaroonPB is.

On July 30 — three months ago — the FBI tweeted out the same overwrought public cry for help to identify MaroonPB. This is the exact same ploy they used for Ray Epps — until the public actually succeeded in identifying Epps, and the FBI responded by wiping all trace of Epps faster than they wiped the log books and cameras for Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell.

The FBI already has in its MaroonPB file what can only be described as the world’s most perfect, well-preserved, crystalline set of doxxing information any domestic intelligence service in the world could possibly pray to the Surveillance State Gods for.

The FBI “Wanted” page for him has several big fat full face shots, maskless, complete with unmistakably unique knuckle tattoos, as well as two full tattoo sleeves.

You can literally read his knuckle tattoos. That’s how HD and pristine these photos are. That shirt says “Marines” by the way, just like Ray Epps, and just like Ryan Samsel (discussed below).

The FBI even has multiple side profiles and 4K HD headshots of our Most Wanted Man smiling for the camera, complete with his already-doxxed network of Proud Boys with whom MaroonPB marched in November, again in December and finally again on January 6.

Do we need to spell out how easy it should be for the FBI to identify this man?

There is even a dazzling video archive of MaroonPB — already sent to the FBI by left-wing researchers in case they missed it — with dozens of detailed videos tracking MaroonPB’s every association and every move from January 5-6, as well as November and December.

It’s not like the man Ray Epps was ordering around is a low-priority target. In addition to MaroonPB working with Epps and Breach Team 6 to cause multiple police barricades to be overrun, we have MaroonPB hurling himself through the main Columbus doors of the Capitol at 2:38pm, just two minutes ahead of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys:

We have him chilling out in Senators’ offices.

So with the US intelligence and security state’s panopticon’s facial ID programs, its infinite phone sweep and search warrant access, its pervasive shakedown powers, as well as a completely ridiculous quantity of high resolution photos and 4K HD videos of MaroonPB trouncing about face-unmasked, knuckle tatts bared, arm tattoo sleeves rolled, do you really think the FBI does not know the identity of this man?

Yet this man, who on video claims to be one of “about a dozen or so” of the earliest barricade-breachers, is still chilling on the Most Wanted list, despite pulling the almost impossible hat trick of initiating two separate Capitol door breaches, trouncing through Senators officers, and being Platinum Tier Most Wanted Hall-Of-Famer for helping kick the entire Capitol riot off in the first place.

Other than Ray Epps and a small handful of others, it’s hard to find a man with a more decorated “insurrection” resume than the young man smiling down on you from the safety of the FBI Most Wanted list.

Here’s a question we’d like to see Merrick Garland dodge: Mr. Garland, is there now, and has there ever been, any individual(s) who appeared on the Capitol Violence Most Wanted List whose activities at the Capitol turned out to be part of their work as agents or assets of a US government agency?

Garland cannot fall back on that question probing to an ongoing investigation. We’re not asking about an investigation. We’re asking a process question related to the FBI’s decision-making process for adding individuals to its Most Wanted list.

We know from the past that the FBI does put people on the Most Wanted List who later turn out to be the FBI’s own informants and operatives. Just a few short years ago, the FBI put crime boss Whitey Bulger atop the FBI Wanted List for 11 separate murders — while simultaneously listing him in their own special access internal files as a confidential government informant, who regularly reported to a Special Agent handler, despite being a “Wanted” man. The FBI’s internal files on Bulger were only accessible by the FBI Field Office’s Special Agent-in-Charge and a small handful of select assistants — meaning the FBI’s rank-and-file thought Bulger was a top criminal they were pursuing, while the upper ranks stymied investigations because Bulger was a confidential human source they were protecting.

If the FBI rather recently reserved the #2 slot on the Most Wanted List (behind only Osama Bin Laden) for one of its own insider confidential operatives, and compartmentalized access to that knowledge such that even most of the FBI didn’t know what was going on at the time, can anyone possibly trust the FBI to report accurate information on January 6?

Is this why the information coming out of the FBI out January 6 is constantly so schizophrenic and self-contradicting?

A few last data points on Ray Epps’ mad-lad MaroonPB:

Amazingly, the FBI says MaroonPB was wielding the exact same brand of bear spray, Frontiersman, that the FBI and New York Times falsely accused George Tanios of wielding against Officer Brian Sicknick back in March.

It was Revolver News’s exhaustive forensic analysis showing there was no plume of bear spray, and that the New York Times had simply falsely drawn a white box around an empty strip of air which the FBI then concurred with in court filings, that forced the New York Times to retract its false bear spray story and an appeals court to ultimately overrule George Tanios’s denial of bail.

But here is MaroonPB with an actual can of actual Frontiersman bear spray, spraying an actual plume at the December 12 MAGA march, as well as him with bear spray again on January 6:

This bear spray appears to be what Ray Epps is referring to at 0:24 when he points down at MaroonPB’s pants and says: “One more thing: when we go in, leave that here. We don’t want to get shot.”

And indeed, in subsequent shots of MaroonPB in the Capitol and after this initial breach, the bear spray is gone from his right pocket. Yet again, MaroonPB seems to have followed Ray Epps’s explicit instructions.

Ray Epps and Ryan Samsel

So at 12:53 p.m., the “Big Bang” sequence of January 6 explodes. It’s the exact moment of the first police barricade breach, and the start of the riot:

As noted above, the New York Times and the Justice Department blame Ryan Samsel for starting the riot, and ignore the fact that just 2.6 seconds earlier, Samsel appeared to be taking explicit directions from Ray Epps – just like MaroonPB was.

Let’s slow this clip down and focus in. Samsel is several bodies ahead of Epps when the clip starts. Epps then comes to the front line, actually grabs Samsel from behind, stops him, freezes him in place with his hand, then speaks directly into Samsel’s ear with his arm around him.

While most of the sound is inaudible, you actually can hear between 0:49 – 0:50 of the source clip, Epps appears to say something like “We go West” – although it may be “We go up” or some similar phonetic variation. If “We go West” is indeed the words indicated from Revolver’s preliminary attempt at audio isolation (note: we do not yet assess a high confidence level to the audio, this is preliminary) that would be quite revealing. Both Epps and Samsel travel together westward after this clip, all the way over the Western Plaza to the front police lines there, as seen in our Where’s Waldo compilation.

Here is why that is so significant:

The FBI identified Samsel as Most Wanted Suspect # 51, and researchers refer to him as #WhiteHoodie.

Samsel is one of just a small handful of men involved in the “breach team” that have actually been arrested. Samsel’s arrest came fairly quickly, just three weeks after January 6. The strange and continuing inability of the FBI to identify or charge the overwhelming majority of the “breach team” leaders, and their monomaniacal focus on Samsel, suggests the fix may have been in for Samsel days or weeks in advance —
much like the fix was in for troubled defendant Adam Fox in the 46% Fed-saturated Michigan Plot.

And Samsel, a 37 year-old Pennsylvanian, does appear to be a quite troubled man. Nevertheless, the story of what has happened to him in prison after January 6 is rather telling.

According to Samsel’s attorney, Samsel has been subjected to what can only be described as an American-soil Abu Ghraib-style torture and beatdown: Prison guards zip-tied Samsel’s hands before breaking his bones and giving him life-long injuries, including a shattered orbital floor, a broken orbital bone, a broken jaw, and a broke nose. His right eye was rendered useless and he may end up permanently blind on that side

All of this from torture-beatings by prison guards.

On top of it, Samsel’s legal scalp has been hoisted for ceremonial victory parades by the Justice Department. Even the typically prosecution-maximalist New York Times reporter Alan Feuer appeared confused as to why the Justice Department so theatrically singled out Samsel for a special press release simply for upgrading his charges in April:

Curiously, despite Samsel’s noted connections to the Proud Boys, and the FBI affidavit’s stipulation that Samsel was coordinating by phone with others about his plans in the days leading up to January 6, the DOJ has opted to quarantine Samsel from the Proud Boys case, and not pursue conspiracy charges against Samsel at all.

Left-wing commentators such as the journalist Marcy Wheeler are perplexed as to why Samsel is relegated to an isolated case, when he appears so patently connected to the Proud Boys and alleged “conspiracy” networks.

One possible answer has apparently never occurred to the left-wing commentariat: the Justice Department doesn’t want any of the discovery record — and potentially the Fed network summoned around Samsel — to taint parallel prosecutions.

The New York Times appears to have accidentally given the game away on Samsel being trailed by confidential informants in the days before January 6. While their September 25 article was called “Among Those Who Marched Into the Capitol on Jan. 6: An F.B.I. Informant,” there were at least two FBI informants they revealed.

In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol. He said that when he arrived, throngs of people were already streaming past the first barrier outside the building, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boy acquaintances and a young woman with him.

This second sentence — “the first barrier, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boys acquaintances and a young woman with him” — appears to be a direct reference to Ryan Samsel (#WhiteHoodie) and his girlfriend, Raechel Genco, also known as #WhiteHoodieGF — as Samsel took down “the first barrier” with his girlfriend at his side.

This means the FBI was already aware of Ryan Samsel, his friend network, his Proud Boy associates, and very likely all coordination efforts among them for days, if not weeks, ahead of January 6.

And this was the squad that allegedly committed the day’s very first illegal acts.

Conclusion

In our previous reporting on FBI involvement in the events of January 6th, we have been careful to distinguish the case of “Federal foreknowledge” from that of “Federal incitement.”

The case of “mere” Federal foreknowledge of the so-called “siege on the Capitol” is bad enough, and amounts to a national scandal in its own right. Indeed, if elements of the federal government knew in advance of conspiracies to “siege the Capitol” or otherwise disrupt the Senate proceeding on 1/6, the natural question arises as to why they did nothing to stop it. Given that the government and their allies in the Regime media have framed 1/6 as a 9/11-caliber domestic terror event, the possibility that elements of the federal government knew about it in advance, and yet sat back and let it happen for political purposes, is incredibly damning. This would amount to nothing less than the government conspiring, for the most malicious of political reasons, to falsely cast tens of millions of law-abiding patriotic Americans as domestic terrorists.

Given the magnitude of its implications, it is well worth repeating that federal foreknowledge is a virtual certainty. Just weeks ago the New York Times itself begrudgingly acknowledged the presence of a Proud Boys militia member and informant who was texting his FBI handler thought the entire day on 1/6, as well as several days in advance. The Times notes that the presence of this informant, and likely many more, suggests that “federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known.”

Revolver News’s ground-breaking investigative reporting on 1/6 has from the very beginning suggested something far darker than federal foreknowledge. Instead of simply having “visibility” in advance to the events of 1/6 and doing nothing to stop it, Revolver has pointed to overwhelming evidence suggesting a much more proactive, participatory role on the part of the federal government.

Our first piece noted that while many minor militia members and fellow-travelers face serious conspiracy charges, several more senior militia members involved in the same activity (often more egregiously so) and referenced in the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys conspiracy charging documents remain mysteriously unindicted.

We later refined this thesis in an extremely deep dive investigative report exploring the extra-ordinary federal protection and selective non-prosecution of Stewart Rhodes, none other than the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia — the key “boogeyman” militia group from the standpoint of both the government and the media. It would be one thing if the feds had low-level informants in Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but the extraordinary federal protection of the founder and head of the main militia group imputed to 1/6 suggests a far more active and participatory role in 1/6 than simply sitting back and letting it happen on purpose.

As dark and scandalous as this is, the notion that the federal government’s agents would take a proactive and participatory role in 1/6 tracks far closely with what we now know to have been the role of federal agents and informants in the so-called Michigan Kidnapping Plot, just months before the so called 1/6 “insurrection.”

Given this background, we are in a better position to understand where this latest piece on Ray Epps fits into the broader narrative collapse of 1/6. If Revolver News’s previous reporting points to a proactive role of the federal government in relation to the conspiracy cases against Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, the Ray Epps story seems to suggest a similar, yet more egregious, explicit, direct and immediate degree of federal involvement in the breach of the Capitol itself.

Indeed, there is one individual who is on tape encouraging the crowd to go into the Capitol the evening before 1/6. That very same individual is seen throughout 1/6 corralling people toward the Capitol “where our problems are.” And that very same individual is on camera whispering into the ears of the men who committed the very first illegal acts of 1/6 by breaking down the barricades. And yet, just like Oath Keeper founder and head Stewart Rhodes, this individual, whom we now know to be Ray Epps, so far has enjoyed an inexplicable protection from prosecution.

Even more damningly, Revolver has confirmed that the FBI scrubbed Epps from their public Most Wanted database just one day after Revolver News’s damning investigative report on Epps’ fellow Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes.

The story of Epps and other suspiciously un-indicted apparent accomplices such as “Maroon PB” suggest a far more extensive degree of proactive federal involvement in 1/6 than even Revolver News had originally anticipated.

And yet, tying it all back to AG Merrick Garland, it all makes sense. The 1/6 prosecutions are not the first time Garland oversaw high profile militia prosecutions from a lofty perch in the DOJ. More specifically, Merrick Garland [15 mentions in this doc.] oversaw the Oklahoma City Bombing prosecutions, which are riddled with so many disturbing unanswered questions that it would be outside the scope of this report to address them. Suffice it to say here that Merrick Garland was the top domestic extremism prosecutor for the Justice Department, who worked with the FBI on several key right-wing militia cases, right as the Justice Department was kicking its militia infiltration operations into high gear. The first such infiltration operation was known formally as “Patcon”:

Starting in April 1991, three FBI agents posed as members of an invented racist militia group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. According to their cover story, VAM members robbed armored cars, using the proceeds to buy weapons and support racist extremism. The lead agent was a Vietnam veteran with a background in narcotics, using the alias Dave Rossi.

…

Code-named PATCON, for “Patriot-conspiracy,” the investigation would last more than two years, crossing state and organizational lines in search of intelligence on the so-called Patriot movement, the label applied to a wildly diverse collection of racist, ultra-libertarian, right-wing and/or pro-gun activists and extremists who, over the years, have found common cause in their suspicion and fear of the federal government.

It is interesting to note that the Feds’ lead agent was a military man and Vietnam vet, especially given Epps’ similar pedigree. A careful study of the history of Fed infiltration into militia groups reveals a pattern of using ex-military personnel to conduct such operations.

What’s still more interesting, however, is how mainstream “domestic extremism” expert JM Berger describes the nature of the PatCon operations, and associated infiltration operations in the 90s that would have taken place under Merrick Garland’s tutelage:

In 1990, the FBI began picking up on rumors about an effort to reconstitute a notorious terrorist-criminal gang known as The Order.

…

To prevent the rise of a “Second Order,” FBI undercover agents would become it.

Very interesting. To prevent the rise of a dangerous domestic terrorist group, the FBI would have to become one, hence the establishment of the honey-pot militia organization “Veterans Aryan Movement” and dozens of other spin-off honeypot Fed militia groups.

Given the damning evidence in this and previous Revolver reports, there is increasingly little doubt that key agencies in the federal government — and key figures such as AG Merrick Garland — take the same approach to infiltration operations today as they did in the 90s. In order to defeat the boogeyman of right-wing “patriot” militia groups, the government has to become them. In order to preempt the fictional possibility of a right-wing insurrection, then, we might say the feds had to become that insurrection.

In light of the overwhelming weight of evidence, this damning conclusion seems unavoidable. We don’t expect a straight answer from AG Garland or FBI Director Wray on this matter just yet, and neither should you. Such answers only come with sufficient pressure, and such pressure only arises from repeated exposure.

What we can guarantee is that Revolver News will continue to expose the lies behind the government and regime media’s false narrative of 1/6. There is so much more to be revealed, and we’re just getting started.

Stay tuned for the next major piece, coming very soon.

Support Revolver By Going AD-FREE—Donate HERE to fund investigative journalism

CHECK OUT THE NEWS FEED—FOLLOW US ON GAB—FOLLOW US ON GETTR

← Front page / Exclusive

SUPPORT REVOLVER.NEWS WITH A DONATION

Please contribute to our war chest. Donations help us grow, stay online, and fight.

DONATE TO REVOLVER

“Our people have all left Drudge ... They like REVOLVER and others!”

President Donald J. Trump

“...many of Drudge's long-time readers have fled to Revolver News...”

Tucker Carlson, FOX News

Want to remove the ads on Revolver? Subscribe!

Support our war chest with a monthly subscription and enjoy a faster, minimal Revolver.News reading experience.

Subscribe monthly

Hide ads for $5/month

Subscribe for a year

Hide ads for $49/year

$11 OFF — Best value

25 COMMENTS

Oldest

David Funnell

4 hours ago

This is likely to break out my imprisoned relatives from their mental NYT “jail.” Credit for “American Exodus” article illustration in Tablet Magazine by the lamented Angelo Codevilla, earned by Cate Andrews.

Marc

3 hours ago

Is this guy working for our “Democrat” Government, setting up the Conservative Right?
Similar to that guy who went to Vegas with thousands of rounds and too many long guns who shot from the high up hotel window, whom the story was erased from the American People.
We decent Americans are being set up by the Leftist-deep-state who are running our Govt.

geecee

3 hours ago

So much here. Hard to get through in one sitting. However, just skimming through, it’s evident 1/6 was definately an insurrection. Not by MAGA supporters, but the very people we are supposed to be able to trust to keep law and order, the feds and the FBI.

srmanuel

3 hours ago

Ray is a member of a fringe right wing site called Free Republic. He goes under the handle RevelationDavid there. He was calling for members to show up and prepare for war days before.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3921495/posts

David Kriegh

3 hours ago

This is blockbuster news and particular for those imprisoned in Federal Prison custody who are not granted legal council.

David Kriegh

3 hours ago

This is blockbuster news particular for those imprisoned after the so-called Jan 6th insurrection. Free those individuals!!

Pelatiah Adams

3 hours ago

I am a 60 year old woman and watched the livestream from President Trump’s speech as well as the Capitol on Jan. 6. One minute I was wishing I could stroll peacefully to the grounds of the Capitol with the crowd, and the next thing I saw was the chaos. I watched more than 2 hours on multiple computers and — as a Marine Corps wife for over 30 years — I recognized this Epps fellow as someone who had military training. And he WAS EVERYWHERE. It didn’t take a bunch of video srutinizing experts to figure out this man had an agenda and was following it. I wondered at the time… and now it all makes perfect sense.

I wonder also if he was directing his “team” towards the tunnels in the basement, as that’s how I believe they got OUT (after they drew unsuspecting citizens inside). They couldn’t just walk out like the “A-Team”…. they were led out through the tunnels and the Newsmax news babe that day got it on her camera/video, unsuspecting. Of course it made no sense in real time. But it certainly does now.

Donna Franklin

3 hours ago

Tucker needs to be on top of this story and get it out there!!!

Mustang

2 hours ago

Wow. This is insane. Hopefully, this new revolver article will get the truth out.

octoberguy

2 hours ago

That NYT exposé on Teh Insurrection™ was clearly bogus on its face to anyone not a democrat and with even half a brain. The breach was hours. Their “full video” was 40 minutes, and mostly graphics and hysterical democrat politicians mouthing off after the fact.

We don’t have a free press. We have a Democrat PR industrial complex.

Featherine

2 hours ago

Reminder that the FBI is a domestic terrorist organization.

Mark

1 hour ago

Excellent article. Thank you.

Stephen Triesch

1 hour ago

One interesting sidebar from this story is how active Antifa/BLM operatives were in helping the FBI identify the January 6th “suspects.” Antifa/BLM are self-professed “revolutionaries, yet they were enthusiastically “partnering” with federal law enforcement. It’s almost as if they view themselves as allies in a common cause. Actually, that also seems to be the view of Merrick Garland.

Stephen Triesch

1 hour ago

If it’s true that Ryan Samsel was brutally beaten by guards in a DC prison (as the article claims), there needs to be a massive lawsuit, a full investigation, and criminal charges. Why has nothing happened? Or has it?

cosMICjester

1 hour ago

Anybody fool enough to be led to the slaughter knowing full well leftist loons control all our institutions will get their draconian punishment. The riot & breach of the Capitol has just given democraps ammo & power to take rights & freedoms away from law abiding citizens.

David Grenier

1 hour ago

These machinations verify the fears of the very same people the machinations are meant to entrap. The “right-wing extremists” are correct. The tactics used against them confirm that the federal government is entirely corrupt and actually stands against the rights of its citizens.

American

49 minutes ago

The question many have is which deep-state agency sent him? [Looks like a Deep State chunk of the FBI and a Deep State chunk right to the t op of the Justice Department. –FNC] The whys may include interfering with the electoral challenge process following the greatest recorded election fraud in U.S. history, exploiting the public’s outrage over the election fraud to further “treasonous” deep-state/uni-party anti-America-First objectives such as retaining power to continue the long-running global sell-off of the United States and sell-out of U.S. workers for profit, to provide further cover for the ongoing rolling coup which finally culminated in an orchestrated election fraud conspiracy, etc… https://www.theconservativetreehouse.com

Michael Day

47 minutes ago

Here is the Real Video of the Babbit shooting
Bitchute . Com
Search MIRROR EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE CAPITAL SHOOTING IN 21 MINUTES OR LESS
Revolver.news WTF you can’t find this video to prove the whole drama is a made for tv show

Elaine Hall

40 minutes ago

Wonderful job thank you 🙏

Over It

26 minutes ago

Its flat out time to start WAXING MoFuggas on the street… The higher the position, the better. Otherwise, bendOver, Open your orifice and accept the communist baseball bat handle deep…

St. Hahn

12 minutes ago

The best explanation of Jan 6 event set up and at the same time the saddest thing I have read in a long time about our government.

Paco

6 minutes ago

Now, to be an FBI agent is a claim to shame. If there are ANY decent ones left, they need to SPEAK UP, if not, they are supporting, and are as bad as, the dirty.

Sue

3 minutes ago

Ray Epps has a business called the “Knotty Barn” in Queen, Arizona.

Mac

3 minutes ago

I guess this is what the Deep State considers to be a Well Regulated Militia.

A perpetually entrapped and self-sabotaging astroturfed movement led by corrupted deep state commisars.