A federal judge Wednesday tossed out a defamation lawsuit against Fox News brought by a man who claimed that the network’s former star host, Tucker Carlson, had falsely accused him of being a government provocateur who instigated the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ruling from the bench in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, the judge, Jennifer L. Hall, dismissed the defamation claims by the man, Ray Epps. He and his lawyers had failed to prove that Carlson had acted with “actual malice,” the judge said.
Epps had accused Carlson last summer of promoting a “fantastical story” that he was an undercover agent who had helped foment the riot at the Capitol to disparage President Donald Trump and his followers.
Defamation lawsuits are notoriously difficult to win — especially those brought against members of the news media. Hall seemed to acknowledge as much by saying that even if Carlson had “engaged in subpar journalism” or failed to fully investigate Epps’ story, that did not mean he had acted with malicious intent.
The dismissal of Epps’ case was a victory for Carlson, who left Fox under a cloud last year, days after the network had agreed to pay more than $787 million to settle a separate defamation suit brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion had claimed that Fox promoted misinformation on air that its machines had been used in a plot to flip votes from Trump during the 2020 election.
In a statement, Fox said the dismissal of Epps’ case was the third time in recent months that judges had tossed out defamation claims against the network.
In July, a suit brought by Nina Jankowicz, the former head of the federal Disinformation Governance Board, was thrown out. On Tuesday, a separate defamation case brought by Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s, was also dismissed.
“Fox News is pleased with these back-to-back decisions from federal courts preserving the press freedoms of the First Amendment,” the network’s statement said.
Epps, a former Trump supporter who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges for his role in the Capitol attack, filed his suit against Fox in July 2023, claiming that Carlson had turned him into “a scapegoat” for the events of Jan. 6.
Those accusations were ultimately echoed by legions of Trump’s supporters as well as by Republicans in Congress, who made Epps — a two-time Trump voter — a focus of concern at public hearings. The subsequent publicity led to death threats, Epps has said, and forced him to essentially go into hiding.
Fox fought the defamation claims by arguing in court papers that they were “a direct attack on the First Amendment.” Moreover, the lawyers — among them, Patrick F. Philbin, who once served as Trump’s deputy White House counsel — maintained that Carlson, in his on-air remarks about Epps, had not been acting with malice but was merely offering opinions.
Hall agreed with much of this, noting that guests whom Carlson brought on his show to discuss Epps — including right-wing journalist Darren Beattie — were simply airing their “own commentary and opinions.”
The judge also noted that on some of his broadcasts, Carlson included Epps’ denial that he was serving as a government asset during the Capitol attack.
The decision left Epps with limited options to seek accountability for what his lawyers have described as a damaging episode in his life.
As accounts about Epps spread online and in the news, he became a kind of boogeyman on the right, blamed for causing the Capitol attack. Online retailers began selling T-shirts that said “Arrest Ray Epps.” Some people even recorded songs about him, his lawyers have said, reducing him to “a character in a cartoonish conspiracy theory.”
Epps and his wife received multiple death threats and were forced to sell their home and wedding event space in Arizona. They moved into a 350-square-foot mobile home at a remote trailer park in the mountains of Utah.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
