James Ray Epps Sr., the Arizona man who was caught on camera the night before January 6th literally telling people "we need to go INTO the Capitol," just had his defamation lawsuit against Fox News dismissed for the second time. A Delaware federal court looked at his case, looked at the evidence, and said — again — nah, you've got nothing.
Two swings. Two misses. At what point does the man on the megaphone stop suing people for pointing out what he said on the megaphone?
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Hall — a Joe Biden appointee, mind you — dismissed Epps's amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), ruling that his claims amounted to nothing more than "conclusory statements." The first dismissal came back in November 2024. Fox News filed its motion to dismiss the amended complaint in January 2025. And now, once again, the court has spoken.
The case, Epps v. Fox News Network, LLC, centered on statements made by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg suggesting Epps may have been acting as a federal government informant on January 6th. Epps called that defamation. The court called it protected speech.
Judge Hall's reasoning was almost poetic in how thoroughly it gutted Epps's argument. She wrote that "whether Epps was in fact acting as a federal government informant on January 6 would likely have been, at the time the challenged statements were made, a confidential piece of information known only to government officials." In plain English: how could Fox News have known the truth one way or the other when only the government had that information?
That's the actual malice standard from the 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan doing exactly what it was designed to do — protecting the press from getting sued into silence for asking uncomfortable questions about public figures. And make no mistake, Epps became a very public figure the moment that video went viral.
As Judge Hall put it plainly: "That is not enough to proceed."
Four words. Case closed. Again.
Here's the thing we all keep dancing around. This man was filmed — on video that the entire internet has watched approximately forty-seven thousand times — urging people to enter the Capitol building. When commentators pointed that out and asked reasonable questions about his role, he didn't just deny it and move on. He sued. He sued the biggest cable news network in America for defamation. And he lost. Then he amended his complaint, tried again, and lost again.
At some point you'd think his lawyers would pull him aside and say, "Ray, buddy, maybe the problem isn't Fox News. Maybe the problem is the video."
As reported by Patriot News Alerts, this second dismissal puts a fine point on what everyone with functioning eyes already knew: you can't sue somebody for defamation when they're describing what you did on camera. The First Amendment still means something, even in Delaware, even with a Biden-appointed judge on the bench.
Two lawsuits. Two dismissals. Zero accountability for the man who told people to storm the Capitol and somehow walked away with a slap on the wrist while grandmothers who wandered through the Rotunda got federal charges.
But sure, Ray. Fox News is the problem.
