A supporter of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) who was also an avid consumer of Fox News is suing the media company saying that he was defamed by Tucker Carlson.

Fox News was hit with a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday by Trump supporter Ray Epps after former host Tucker Carlson repeatedly called Epps an undercover FBI agent who orchestrated the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

Carlson said Epps, an Arizona resident and former marine, “helped stage-manage the insurrection” – a conspiracy he broadcast in nearly 20 episodes.

Carlson also told viewers that Epps was recorded urging the mob to enter the Capitol building, but that he never entered himself.
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Epps claims he and his wife, Robyn, have received death threats and that their lives were ruined because of Carlson’s conspiracies.

The lawsuit reads: “As Fox recently learned in its litigation against Dominion Voting Systems, its lies have consequences.”

The lawsuit describes Epps as a “loyal Fox viewer and Trump supporter” and rejeted [sic] the notion he was a federal agent.
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Legal experts noted earlier this week that while Epps will have to prove that Carlson’s claims damaged his reputation, he presents a strong argument and therefore probably has standing.

David D Lin of the Lewis & Lin LLC law firm said he believed “there is a lot of potential risk here to Fox and they need to take the claims very seriously,” before adding that Carlson could be personally liable if the suit included him.

Epps could face charges himself for his role in the January 6 insurrection. He was questioned by the House January 6 committee, though a criminal investigation is still ongoing.

This indicates how once you start down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking to defend the indefensible and to attack your political opponents, almost anything sounds plausible and you start making ever more reckless statements because that is how you keep getting attention.

Another example of this phenomenon is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noted anti-vaxxer and conspiracist, who is running for the Democratic party nomination for president. He has suggested before that the covid-19 virus was engineered, something that has become an act of faith in the anti-vaccine movement. But that is old now and at a recent event he upped the stakes, suggesting (formulating it with the usual escape clause that “there is an argument”) that it was designed to differentially harm Caucasians and Black people and avoid harming Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

Here’s what he said …

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately … COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese … We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”

If you’re interested you can see the video here.

Here’s the video.

VIDEO:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims coronavirus was an "ethnically targeted" bioweapon designed to be more deadly for caucasians and blacks — and spare Jews and Chinese https://t.co/xfAdovs0sY pic.twitter.com/og4xHdKs7x

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) July 15, 2023

That claim is preposterous on its face. Creating a virus in the lab is not easy. Designing it to target or avoid specific ethnic groups would be incredibly difficult, bordering on the impossible. But once you have gone into conspiratorial thinking, stretching the boundaries becomes easy to do. In a sense, this is a backhanded compliment to science, that people are so impressed with its achievements that they assign abilities to scientists that few would claim for themselves.