Raymond Epps Fox News Lawsuit: Why Both Complaints Were Dismissed

Ray Epps’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News was dismissed by a federal judge in Delaware, first in November 2024 and again in May 2026, after the court found he could not plausibly show that the network or Tucker Carlson knew their claims branding him an undercover federal agent behind the January 6 Capitol attack were false. The ruling turned on the “actual malice” standard that public figures must meet in defamation cases, a bar Judge Jennifer L. Hall concluded Epps’s allegations did not clear.

What Epps Sued Fox News Over

Epps, an Arizona rancher and former Marine, filed suit on July 10, 2023, in Delaware Superior Court. The complaint, James Ray Epps, Sr. v. Fox News Network, alleged that Fox and Carlson built a “fictitious story and narrative” casting Epps as an undercover FBI agent who had helped incite the January 6, 2021, riot, and that the network pushed the theory as a way to shift blame away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party.¹²

Carlson had raised the theory in nearly 20 episodes of his show, calling Epps a “secret government agent” who had “stage-manage[d] the insurrection” and suggesting media coverage of him was an attempt to “cover something up.”³ Federal prosecutors, the House Select Committee, and the FBI all rejected the claim. In April 2023 the bureau stated flatly, “Ray Epps has never been an FBI source or an FBI employee.”⁴

The lawsuit tied the Fox coverage to concrete harm. Epps and his wife received death threats, including a note warning, “Epps, sleep with one eye open,” and shell casings were found on their property.⁵⁶ The couple sold their Queen Creek ranch and wedding venue at a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars and were living in a trailer in the Utah woods by January 2024.⁷ Epps sought unspecified damages and a jury trial, with attorney Michael Teter representing him.⁸

Fox promptly removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.²

The First Dismissal and the Actual Malice Problem

On November 27, 2024, U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Hall granted Fox’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Both sides had agreed Epps qualified as a public figure. Under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, that meant he had to plead facts showing “actual malice”: that Fox knew its statements about him were false, or broadcast them with reckless disregard for whether they were true.⁹

Falsity alone is not enough. A public-figure plaintiff has to allege facts pointing to the speaker’s subjective state of mind at the time of publication, and the court found Epps’s complaint did not do that. Judge Hall dismissed the case without prejudice, giving him a chance to amend and refile.¹⁰

The Amended Complaint and the May 2026 Dismissal

Epps’s amended complaint tried to shore up the state-of-mind allegations by drawing on statements from former Fox employees, including Abby Grossberg, to argue that Carlson and his team had known the government-agent narrative was false. It was not enough.

On May 8, 2026, Judge Hall dismissed the lawsuit a second time. The updated pleading, she wrote, still did not “give rise to a plausible inference that Carlson or anyone else responsible for [his show] subjectively knew that their statements were false or that they possessed a reckless disregard for the truth.”¹⁰⁹

Fox News said it was “pleased with the federal court’s ruling, further preserving the press freedoms of the First Amendment.”¹¹

Why This Case Failed Where Dominion Succeeded

Fox has not been immune to defamation liability over its January 6 and election coverage. The network paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle its defamation suit in 2023, and Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion suit against Fox remained active as of late 2025.¹²

The difference lay in the evidence. In the Dominion case, discovery produced extensive internal Fox communications in which network personnel privately acknowledged the falsity of the election-fraud claims they were putting on air. That kind of contemporaneous internal record is close to a textbook showing of actual malice. No comparable trove of internal documents about the Epps segments has surfaced in this litigation, and without something like it, Epps could not push his allegations past the pleading stage.

Where the Case Stands Now

The case docket shows the lawsuit was terminated on May 8, 2026, with a final administrative entry on May 12, 2026. As of that date, no notice of appeal to the Third Circuit had been filed.¹³

Epps himself has been blunt about where he places responsibility. Speaking in federal court at his own sentencing on a misdemeanor Capitol riot charge in January 2024, he told the judge: “Trust in elected officials and Fox News led to my gullibility in believing the election was stolen. What I witnessed was rage and vulgarity on a level I’ve never seen before, and it was generated by people like me, not the F.B.I. or antifa.” Chief Judge James Boasberg, who sentenced Epps to a year of probation, acknowledged the harassment he had absorbed, saying he had been “hounded out of your home” and “hounded out of your town,” and calling him the first January 6 defendant “to have suffered for what you didn’t do.”¹⁴ Prosecutors, for their part, conceded in court that Epps had been “unfairly scapegoated.”¹⁵

Those findings did not change the outcome of the civil suit. Under current First Amendment doctrine, a public-figure plaintiff who cannot allege facts about what a broadcaster actually knew, or what serious doubts it actually entertained, at the time of publication does not get to a jury. That is the ground on which the Epps v. Fox News case ended.

1
NPR. Fox News Sued Ray Epps Defamation Jan. 6
2
PBS NewsHour. Former Trump Supporter Sues Fox News Over Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory
3
The Guardian. Fox News Tucker Carlson Ray Epps Jan. 6 Insurrection Lawsuit
4
CBS News. Jan. 6 Committee Staffer: Zero Evidence That Ray Epps Was a Federal Agent
5
AZ Family. Arizona Man at Center of Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Charged With Misdemeanor
6
The New York Times. Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Ray Epps
7
WHYY. January 6 Capitol Riot Ray Epps Sentenced Year of Probation
8
NBC News. Pro-Trump Protester Ray Epps Files Defamation Suit Against Fox News
9
U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Epps v. Fox News Network, Memorandum Opinion
10
The Guardian. Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed Raymond Epps Fox News January 6
11
Hartford Courant. Judge Tosses Lawsuit Against Fox
12
Courthouse News Service. Fox Loses Bid to Pause Smartmatic Defamation Case
13
CourtListener. Epps v. Fox News Network, LLC Docket
14
The New York Times. Ray Epps Sentenced in January 6 Case
15
Politico. Ray Epps Probation Capitol Riot