Fox News hit with another defamation lawsuit — this one over Jan. 6 allegations

David Folkenflik

July 12, 2023 / 12:25 pm

caption: A man who was at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has sued Fox News for defamation. Here, a woman walks by the Fox News headquarters in New York in April.

Fox News has been hit with another defamation lawsuit. Ray Epps, a man who was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, filed the suit this week.

The suit centers on the actions of former primetime star, Tucker Carlson, who was fired by the network this spring. On his show, Carlson repeatedly placed Epps at the center of the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol, without presenting hard evidence.

"In the aftermath of the events of January 6th, Fox News searched for a scapegoat to blame other than Donald Trump or the Republican Party. Eventually, they turned on one of their own, telling a fantastical story in which Ray Epps - who was a Trump supporter that participated in the protests on January 6th – was an undercover FBI agent and was responsible for the mob that violently broke into the Capitol and interfered with the peaceful transition of power for the first time in this country's history," the suit begins.

Fox News paid $787.5 million earlier this year to settle a defamation claim brought by a voting-technology company over falsehoods related to the 2020 presidential election. This new suit is being heard in the same venue, Delaware Superior Court.