A federal judge dismissed Ray Epps' defamation lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, ruling in a 27-page opinion that the former Arizona resident failed to show the network acted with "actual malice" when its broadcasts raised questions about his role in the January 6 Capitol breach.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Hall, sitting in the District of Delaware, granted Fox News Network LLC's motion to dismiss the amended complaint, the second time the court has rejected Epps' claims. Hall had already tossed the original complaint in November 2024 but gave Epps a chance to refile. His second attempt fared no better.
The ruling is a clean win for Fox News and a vindication of the network's right to cover one of the most debated figures in the Jan. 6 saga. It also reaffirms the high bar that public figures must clear to win defamation claims, a bar Epps could not meet, as Newsmax reported.
Epps filed his defamation lawsuit against Fox News in Delaware Superior Court in 2023. He alleged that several 2022 and 2023 broadcasts of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" falsely portrayed him as a federal informant or undercover operative who helped instigate the Capitol breach. Fox promptly exercised its right under federal law to remove the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, where the parties' different home states and the size of the claim gave the federal court jurisdiction.
Fox immediately moved to dismiss. The network argued that Carlson's broadcasts relied on publicly available facts and that Epps, as a public figure, could not meet the constitutional standard for defamation set out in New York Times v. Sullivan.
That standard requires a public figure to prove "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statements were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. It is a deliberately high bar, designed to protect robust public debate. Epps could not clear it.
Hall's opinion went straight at the core question: Did Epps plausibly allege that Carlson or anyone responsible for the program knew they were airing falsehoods?
The answer was no. As Hall wrote in the opinion:
"The allegations do not give rise to a plausible inference that Carlson or anyone else responsible for TCT subjectively knew that their statements were false or that they possessed a reckless disregard for the truth."
The judge noted that Carlson's broadcasts drew on publicly known facts. Video showed Epps urging protesters on Jan. 5 to enter the Capitol "peacefully" the next day. Other footage captured his interactions with demonstrators near police barricades on Jan. 6. These were not fabricated details. They were facts available to anyone with an internet connection.
Hall also assumed, for purposes of the motion, that viewers could have interpreted Carlson's comments as implying Epps was working with the government. Even granting that interpretation, the judge found Epps still fell short of showing actual malice. That is a telling concession, the court gave Epps every benefit of the doubt and still ruled against him.
The pattern echoes a recent ruling tossing a defamation suit involving another public figure, where a federal judge similarly found that heated commentary did not cross the legal line into actionable defamation.
To bolster his amended complaint, Epps leaned on statements from three former Fox employees: Abby Grossberg, Jason Donner, and Geraldo Rivera. Hall rejected all three.
None of them, the judge found, had direct knowledge about whether Epps actually had any relationship with federal authorities. None had responsibility for the content aired on Carlson's program. Their statements, in other words, did not prove that anyone at Fox knew the broadcasts were false, because the witnesses themselves did not know the underlying facts.
This is the kind of evidentiary gap that sinks defamation claims. Epps needed insiders who could testify that Fox deliberately aired information it knew to be wrong. What he had instead were former employees offering opinions about a subject they had no firsthand knowledge of.
Hall's opinion also referenced a Justice Department inspector general report confirming that FBI confidential human sources were present in Washington during the Jan. 6 events. The court did not suggest Epps himself was one of them. But the report's existence matters for a simple reason: it shows that the questions Carlson raised on air were not plucked from thin air.
The FBI did have informants in the crowd. That was an established, inspector-general-confirmed fact. Asking whether a specific person who was filmed urging people toward the Capitol might have been connected to federal authorities was, at minimum, a legitimate line of inquiry, not a reckless fabrication.
That context is important when you consider the broader landscape of high-profile defamation battles involving public figures, where courts continue to grapple with where aggressive commentary ends and actionable falsehood begins.
The timeline of Epps' own legal troubles adds another layer. He pleaded guilty in 2023 to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct related to Jan. 6. The New York Post reported that the plea was to one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds, and that federal officials reiterated at the time that Epps was not an FBI agent or asset. FBI Director Christopher Wray called it "ludicrous" to suggest the Capitol riot was "orchestrated" by the bureau.
Epps himself denounced the theory as "crazy" in testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee and told the committee, as the Washington Examiner reported, "I never intended to break the law." Still, the extended delay in charging Epps, while hundreds of other Jan. 6 participants faced swift prosecution, is precisely what fueled the online speculation that Carlson and others amplified.
President Donald Trump later included Epps among those pardoned in January 2025, according to Hall's opinion.
The dismissal closes a chapter that began when Epps tried to use the courts to punish a news network for asking uncomfortable questions. Whatever one thinks of Carlson's style or the specific claims made on his program, the legal question was narrow: Did Fox knowingly broadcast falsehoods or act with reckless disregard for the truth?
Judge Hall said no, twice. The original complaint failed. The amended complaint failed. Epps' hand-picked witnesses failed to deliver the goods. And the publicly available evidence that Carlson relied on was real, documented, and confirmed in part by the government's own inspector general.
The ruling also matters beyond this single case. In an era when politically charged rhetoric routinely triggers calls for legal consequences, the Sullivan standard remains a critical shield for press freedom. Public figures who enter the arena, or find themselves in it, cannot silence coverage simply because they dislike the questions being asked.
Carlson departed Fox News in April 2023, months after the lawsuit was filed. But the legal battle continued without him as a party, with Fox News Network LLC defending the broadcasts.
Several open questions remain. Whether Epps will appeal is unknown. The exact statements Carlson made that Epps found defamatory were not detailed in the available reporting. And the broader debate about how courts handle politically sensitive Jan. 6-related cases is far from settled.
Ray Epps wanted a federal court to declare that Fox News lied about him. Instead, the court declared, in 27 pages of careful analysis, that asking hard questions about a public figure's conduct during a national crisis is not defamation. It is journalism.
The First Amendment does not guarantee that public figures will enjoy the coverage they receive. It guarantees that the press can ask the questions the public wants answered, even when the subject of those questions would rather they stop.
Epps had his day in court. Twice. The answer both times was the same: the law protects the people who ask tough questions, not the people who want to shut them up.
