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By Bill Rice

Emily Rainey, the granddaughter of Troy resident Jack Rainey and the late Alesha Grace Rainey and a former captain in the U.S. Army, will be one of the featured interview subjects in a Tucker Carlson documentary which will debut Monday on Fox Nation.

The several-part documentary “Patriot Purge”  will focus on events surrounding a Jan. 6, 2021 rally in Washington D.C. where many people ultimately entered the U.S. Capitol. Emily Rainey was at the event but did not enter the Capitol.

“What really happened on January 6? … How much of what really happened on that day is a lie?” Asked Carlson in a trailer promoting the documentary.  Fox Nation is a subscriber streaming news service recently launched by Fox News.

Emily Rainey is among interview subjects featured in the clip promoting the investigative report.

“If that was an insurrection, it was the most poorly conducted insurrection ever,” Ms. Rainey is quoted as saying in the promo, and also: “False flags have happened in this country. One of which may have been January 6.”

In addition to his new Fox Nation venture, Carlson hosts the No. 1-rated TV news program in the Country “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. It’s possible (but not known for certain) that Ms. Rainey will also be featured on Carlson’s popular cable TV show, said her grandfather, Jack Rainey.

According to a promo for the series, Carlson and his producers have been working on the Fox Nation documentary for several months.

Among other topics, the documentary will explore the possibility that “operatives” perhaps recruited by the FBI helped instigate the so-called “insurrection.” Several prominent politicians, including Wyoming Senator Liz Cheney, have criticized Fox News for airing the documentary.

Ms. Rainey, 31, is the son of Troy native Scott Rainey and Elaine Rainey. Her parents, who now live in Pennsylvania,  met as cadets in the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, and are both former Army officers.

Scott Rainey is a 1983 graduate of Charles Henderson High School and served more than 20 years in active duty, retiring as a Lt. Colonel. In high school he was a first-team All-State safety his senior year and was also a member of the CHHS 1980 state championship team. At West Point, he was a punter on the Army football team.

Emily Rainey’s grandfather, Jack Rainey, is a long-time civic leader and retired banker who now works part-time at Green Hills Funeral Home. Emily’s late grandmother, also known as Billye Mae, was a fixture in Troy City Schools as a long-time popular substitute teacher.

Like her parents, Emily also served as an officer in the Army, including tours serving in Afghanistan. She resigned earlier this year having reached the rank of captain. She was serving as a psychological officer for a Special Operations unit based in Ft. Bragg North Carolina when she left the military in April.

Emily Rainey, along with an estimated 250,000 other Americans, attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington D.C.  to protest what they believed to be election fraud. According to media reports, Mrs. Rainey was a leader of the North Carolina group Moore County Citizens for Freedom. Approximately 100 members of the group attended the rally.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey said several days after her participation drew national and international publicity. She was not in uniform when she attended the rally and she had told her superior officers she would be attending, she said at the time.

She had already announced her plans to resign from the military at the time she attended the rally.

Her participation in the rally was not the first time Emily Rainey’s political views attracted media attention. In May 2020, she was arrested after she took her small son to a public playground which had been closed and sealed off with police tape as part of the North Carolina governor’s order to close playgrounds to prevent spread of the coronavirus.

To protest the order, she removed the tape and aired a short video at a Facebook Group called “Reopen NC.” A still shot at one media website shows Ms. Rainey’s son happily sliding down a sliding board.

After her activities were reported to officials, she was arrested and charged with injury to personal property. Officials said they had previously issued her a warning.

North Carolina TV station WRAL covered her arrest.

“Everyone here, all you freedom fighters, this is for you,” Rainey said before filming herself removing tape from the play equipment. In the video, Rainey refers to Centers for Disease Control guidance related to transmission of the coronavirus.

“The CDC just said that COVID does not spread on surfaces the way they originally thought, so we’re going to play,” she said.