Wray calls conspiracy theories of FBI involvement in January 6 ‘ludicrous’ – live | FBI

Ray Epps, an Arizona man who twice voted for Donald Trump, has sued the conservative Fox News network over statements made by host Tucker Carlson on his now-canceled show accusing him of playing a role in the January 6 insurrection, the New York Times report.

The suit, in which Carlson is also named, is the latest legal trouble facing Fox, whose personalities acted as major conduits for conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and the attack on the Capitol. Earlier this year, it agreed to pay voting equipment firm Dominion $787.5m to settle a suit over statements made about its business by Fox’s hosts and anchors.

In his ongoing testimony before the House judiciary committee, FBI director Christopher Wray was asked about Epps, and denied that he was working for the bureau.

Here’s more on the lawsuit, from the Times:

Ray Epps, the man at the center of a widespread conspiracy theory about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Fox News and its former host Tucker Carlson of defamation for promoting a “fantastical story” that Mr. Epps was an undercover government agent who instigated the violence at the Capitol as a way to disparage then-President Trump and his supporters.

The complaint was filed in Superior Court in Delaware, where Fox recently agreed to a $787.5 million settlement in a separate defamation case brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems to combat claims that the company had helped to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.

“Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th,” the complaint says. “It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.”

Fox News did not immediately respond when asked for comment. But the network moved quickly to have the venue changed to Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del.

All-expenses-paid trips, book promotions and property selling.

Some of the US supreme court’s conservative judges are mired in ethical controversies that have prompted members of Congress to call for not only testimony from Chief Justice John Roberts, but also for formal accountability, for what they say is democracy’s sake.

Senate Democrats this week have called for a vote on a bill to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow. The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.

The ethical concerns involving court justices have continued to mount. Most recently, the Guardian reported that lawyers who have conducted business before the US supreme court have paid an aide to Clarence Thomas money via Venmo.

Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.

FBI director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the House judiciary committee is ongoing. It’s been a generally partisan hearing, with Democrats defending the Donald Trump-appointed FBI chief, and Republicans trying to get him to admit misconduct or weigh in on various conspiracy theories. So far, Wray has denied any involvement by the bureau in the January 6 attack, and had heated back and forths with two rightwing lawmakers over allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family, and a memo warning about “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology”. It’s not over yet, so we’ll let you know what more may come out of the encounter.

Here’s what else has happened so far today:

• A top aide to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas took money from several lawyers with business before the court, apparently in connection to a Christmas party, a Guardian investigation has found.

• Inflation continued to cool in the United States last month, good news both for Biden and the Federal Reserve’s quest to halt the price increases without driving the economy into a recession.

• House speaker Kevin McCarthy made it clear he was onboard with his fellow Republicans’ efforts to hold the FBI and justice department to account.

Let’s step away from the House judiciary committee hearing with FBI director Christopher Wray for a moment to focus on another corner of the America justice system: the supreme court. The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner has uncovered new details about the relationship between conservative justice Clarence Thomas and lawyers with interests before the court:

Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.

The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.

Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.

After taking control of the House earlier this year, Republicans convened a subcommittee tasked with uncovering the “weaponization of the federal government”. Chaired by Jim Jordan, an acolyte of Donald Trump and promoter of many of his conspiracy theories, the committee has so far this year held hearings examining whether the Biden administration has stifled free speech and taking testimony from FBI whistleblowers, among other subjects.

Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee asked the FBI director, Christopher Wray, about the allegation at the heart of the subcommittee.

“Republican members of this committee have spent much time of this Congress claiming that various aspects of the US government have been weaponized against the American people. Director Ray, are you or your staff or auxiliaries weaponizing the FBI against the American people?” Lee asked.

“Absolutely not,” he replied.

In his testimony to the House judiciary committee, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, decried conspiracy theories promoted by rightwing figures such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as well as some Republican lawmakers that the bureau’s agents were involved in the January 6 insurrection.

Wray’s comments came in an exchange with Democratic congressman Steve Cohen, who asked Wray whether Ray Epps, a man Carlson and others have claimed was a government agent and provoked the storming of the US Capitol, worked for the FBI.

“No,” Wray replied. “I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women.”

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Epps was considering suing Fox News for Carlson’s comments about him. The conservative network earlier this year agreed to pay $787.5m to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by voting equipment manufacturer Dominion over misinformation Fox personalities spread about its business’s involvement in the 2020 election.

As the House judiciary committee begins its hearing with the FBI director, Christopher Wray, the Biden administration has released a statement decrying the GOP’s attacks on federal law enforcement.

“Extreme House Republicans have decided that the only law enforcement they like is law enforcement that suits their own partisan political agenda. Instead of backing the blue, they’re attacking the blue – going after the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement professionals with political stunts to try to get themselves attention on the far right,” said the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, Ian Sams.

He accused the Republicans of “barreling ahead with efforts to defund the police at the federal level”, citing judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan’s proposal yesterday to “eliminate any funding for the FBI that is not absolutely essential for the agency to execute its mission”.

“Instead of attacking federal law enforcement for political purposes, House Republicans should join President Biden to stand up for law enforcement and put the rule of law and the safety and security of the American people ahead of themselves.”

Consumer prices in the United States rose only 3% last month compared to the year prior, data released today indicates, the latest sign that the inflation wave bedeviling the economy is ebbing after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates.

The data is good news for Joe Biden, who saw his approval ratings tumble after prices began rising in 2021, and continues to receive low marks from many Americans for his handling of the economy. The report is also a hopeful sign that the central bank’s rate hikes are curbing inflation without damaging growth – a side effect that many economists feared would follow the increase in borrowing costs.

Follow our live blog for more on what the data means for the US, and global, economies:

In an opinion piece published by Fox News, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has made clear he is on board with efforts by his fellow Republicans to investigate the FBI and justice department.

“Evidence continues to mount that the Biden Justice Department enforces the law unequally by tilting the scales to favor friends and family while unleashing the FBI and prosecutors on President Biden’s political opponent. This is a perversion of the founding principles of our Republic and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law,” McCarthy wrote.

The speaker’s piece underscores how using the House’s investigative powers against the Biden administration remains a major priority of Republicans, after they took the majority in the chamber in last year’s midterm elections. It’s also a sign that the FBI director, Christopher Wray, can expect plenty of questions about the investigations into Donald Trump and Hunter Biden as well as other alleged instances of “weaponization” from Republicans when he appears before the judiciary committee at 10am.

The House speaker is grabbing on to whatever he can find to paint the Biden administration as lawless. In an appearance on Fox Business Network, McCarthy tied the cocaine found at the White House earlier this month to a wider pattern of alleged misdeeds:

Good morning, US politics blog readers. FBI director Christopher Wray was appointed by Donald Trump, but his Republican bonafides are unlikely to matter much when he appears before the House judiciary committee at 10am ET. Under chair Jim Jordan, a prominent ally of the former president, the committee’s GOP lawmakers have used their powers to defend the former president from the various criminal investigations he has been ensnared in, including the federal inquiry into the secret documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, which resulted in his indictment in June. That’s a matter the FBI was heavily involved in, and GOP enmity over it has grown so severe that some in the party have called for defunding the bureau.

The judiciary committee has also pressed on with efforts to prove, thus far without much success, that Hunter Biden, or perhaps even his father, Joe Biden, are corrupt, which nearly resulted in them holding Wray in contempt for not cooperating. Expect both of these subjects, and more, to be asked about when Wray makes his appearance before the committee.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• Joe Biden is continuing his day at the Nato summit in Lithuania, which includes a visit with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. We have a live blog covering it all here.

• The United States continues to grapple with extreme weather, which sparked flooding in the northeast and dangerous heat in the south. Follow live updates here.

• Republicans in Iowa have managed to pass a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in a special session called by Republican governor Kim Reynolds.