The Jan. 6 committee’s announcement that it has cleared Ray Epps of being an FBI informant during the unrest at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is an effort to “manipulate public opinion rather than collect facts,” an attorney representing a Jan. 6 defendant said Wednesday. The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol announced on Twitter that it had met with Epps, who “informed us that he was not employed by, working with, or acting at the direction of any law enforcement agency on Jan 5th or 6th or at any other time.” That announcement came shortly after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), grilled a senior FBI official during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting about Epps and whether the agency had any undercover assets working at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It came a day before Epps’s attorney, John Blischak, told …