Tucker Carlson hit with formal demand for 'on-air apology' over 'lies' about Ray Epps

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been sent a letter from an attorney representing Ray Epps, the Trump supporter who says he's been falsely accused by Carlson of being a secret federal informant.

The New York Times reports that attorney Michael Teter has sent Carlson a letter demanding that he retract past "lies" he told about Epps on his show.

Teter is also demanding that Carlson deliver his client an "on-air apology" for falsely smearing him as a government plant sent to provoke an angry mob to storm the United States Capitol building on January 6th, 2021.

“The fanciful notions that Mr. Carlson advances on his show regarding Mr. Epps’s involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection are demonstrably (and already proven to be) false,” Teter wrote. “And yet Mr. Carlson persists with his assault on the truth.”

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Epps has not yet filed a lawsuit against Carlson or Fox News, although the Times report notes that letters such as the one sent by Teter are often precursors to formal defamation lawsuits.

Epps last year told the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots that his life had been turned "upside down" after he was falsely accused of being an FBI plant.

"We had a tour bus come by our home and our business with all these whacked out people in it," Epps told the committee. "There are good people out there that was in Washington. Those aren't the people that's coming by our house. This attracts — when they do this sort of thing, this attracts all the crazies out there."