Ray Epps, Target of Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory, Is Sentenced to Probation

Ray Epps, the former Trump supporter who became a target of a conspiracy theory that he was an undercover government agent who helped to instigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for his own small role in the riot instead of the six months in prison that prosecutors had requested.

The probation sentence, imposed after Mr. Epps had pleaded guilty last year to a single count of disorderly conduct stemming from his presence in the pro-Trump mob near the Capitol, brought his prosecution to a close. But it was unlikely to end the persistent false narrative that he was a provocateur out to entrap his fellow conservatives on Jan. 6 even though he, his lawyer, the prosecutor and even the judge overseeing the case all asserted in open court that the tale was preposterous.

“Trust in elected officials and Fox News led to my gullibility in believing the election was stolen,” Mr. Epps told Judge James E. Boasberg in Federal District Court in Washington. “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.”

Speaking in the same courthouse where former President Donald J. Trump was attending a federal appeals court hearing related to his prosecution on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election, Judge Boasberg told Mr. Epps, “While many defendants have been vilified in a way unique to Jan. 6, you seem to be the first to have suffered for what you didn’t do.”

The F.B.I. began looking into Mr. Epps, a former rancher and Marine from Arizona, almost immediately after Jan. 6 as investigators came into possession of video of him on the streets of Washington on Jan. 5 telling a group of Trump