Epps, they said, was a government plant that sowed the seeds of insurrection well before a crowd rushed the perimeter around the Capitol steps. Video taken by protesters the night before the riot showed Epps on the streets of Washington, D.C. encouraging physical intervention to stop the electoral count, a crowd blaring chants of “Fed! Fed! Fed!” as he spoke.

Another video showed him apparently telling attendees at Trump’s speech on The Ellipse to make their way to the U.S. Capitol after Trump himself urged the crowd to march and, later, at the front lines working to push through the blockade.

Far-right conspiracy theorists, members of Congress, and even the former president himself suspected Epps as a potential tool of a sort of “deep state” conspiracy seeking to discredit Trump’s movement.

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie scrutinized the January 6th Select Committee’s decision to adjourn for the year without fulfilling its promise to release Epps’ transcript.

Trump, earlier in the year, appeared to endorse conspiracy theories on Truth Social involving Epps and his wife while suggesting Epps was at the heart of a left-wing plot to stoke the flames of violence. Others aired their suspicions outright in the halls of Congress to the people best-equipped to answer the question.

“Was Ray Epps a fed?” Texas Senator Ted Cruz asked Assistant FBI Director Jill Sanborn in a congressional hearing on the riot earlier this year.

“Senator,” she responded, “I can’t answer that question.”

Epps’ own words, however, can. After a lengthy delay, the January 6 Select Committee released transcripts Thursday from a January 2022 interview with Epps in which the Trump supporter denies having ever worked for the agency.

He did, however, confess to onetime membership in the Oath Keepers, an extremist group with a close association with the violence exhibited on January 6, and expressed concern that activists involved with the leftist antifascist movement would be in attendance, looking to start trouble. Some text messages hinted at in the interview suggested Epps sought out medical supplies should the worst actually occur.

Newsweek reached out to Massie and Cruz’s offices, as well as former President Donald Trump, for comment.

When he actually got to D.C., Epps—according to the transcripts—actually found himself playing peacekeeper between Trump supporters and the police, particularly involving the white supremacist media personality known as Baked Alaska.

Epps, he told members of the committee, “had words with” Baked Alaska, telling him that “this is not what we’re about,” and that they “need to stay focused” on the task at hand and should not be antagonizing the police. But, he also expressed concerns that the 2020 election had been marred by fraud, and his desire to petition his government for reconciliation. Namely, by entering the Capitol—a suggestion he posed to protesters antagonizing the police.

“I was trying to find some common ground,” he told investigators. “This guy was trying to turn people against me…he was calling me ‘boomer,’ and it’s his generation’s fault that we’re in the position we’re in.”

“I got caught up in the moment,” he added. “I said that. I—as you can tell—I didn’t want to fight with anybody. I didn’t want any violence. I was trying to prevent. If you had footage, body cam footage from the police, you would see even more of me trying to stop that stuff.”

The transcripts, all produced under oath, verify similar statements Epps had already made to members of the national media, as well as audio released by defense attorneys demonstrating Epps calling the FBI to explain himself after he was listed on a roster of January 6 suspects.

Despite efforts to clear his name, and his own statements to the press, Epps said he has since been forced to start a new life for himself, selling his business and his Arizona home when the conspiracies about his name failed to disappear.

“You can’t convince some people,” he told The New York Times earlier this year. “There are extremists out there that you’ll never convince them that they’re wrong.”