Even by a conspiracy theorist’s requirements, the wild claims made by Consultant Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, stand out.
The hard-right congressman, now in his fourth time period within the Home, has stated that “ghost buses” took brokers provocateurs to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to instigate the riot. He has claimed that the federal authorities is waging a “civil conflict” in opposition to Texas. And he has referred to as the felony costs in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump for mishandling labeled paperwork a “perimeter probe from the oppressors.”
However removed from relegating Mr. Higgins to the perimeter of their more and more fractious convention, Home Republicans have elevated him. They made him the chairman of the subcommittee overseeing border enforcement, and Speaker Mike Johnson named him considered one of 11 impeachment managers tasked with attempting to take away the homeland safety secretary from workplace in a Senate trial set to happen subsequent week.
None of it has dampened Mr. Higgins’s penchant for spreading unsupported theories, a lot of which painting legislation enforcement and the federal government in an evil, conspiratorial gentle.
This week, in a prolonged podcast interview, he expounded at size on his perception — based mostly, he stated, on his personal intensive investigation and proof that solely he has been in a position to see — that federal legislation enforcement officers entrapped Mr. Trump’s supporters into violently attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was repeating a conspiracy concept that has been debunked repeatedly.
Over the course of a two-hour interview on the “Implicit Bias” podcast, Mr. Higgins, carrying a shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the Three Percenters, a right-wing antigovernment militia, repeated the lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent. He laid out an outlandish story that tied the rise of the coronavirus pandemic to what he stated was a plot by the federal government to infiltrate pro-Trump on-line boards and urge members to have interaction in “riotous” habits, as he put it.
Lastly, he stated, additionally groundlessly, that federal brokers posing as Trump supporters traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 and tricked Mr. Trump’s backers into finishing up mob violence.
It was the newest reminder that, greater than three years after the assault, right-wing Republicans at each degree proceed to unfold falsehoods about what occurred on Jan. 6 and at the moment are looking for to make use of these lies as a rallying cry to denounce the federal government, promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy and rile up his supporters.
Mr. Higgins claimed that he had carried out his personal investigation into what occurred that day. He predicted that when Home Republicans end posting safety footage of the assault on-line, costs in opposition to Jan. 6 defendants would crumble.
“The entire thing,” Mr. Higgins stated, “was a nefarious agenda to entrap MAGA People.”
Mr. Higgins, who earlier than coming to Congress was accused of utilizing pointless power when he was a police officer, later gained fame by way of a collection of widespread movies that earned him the nickname “Cajun John Wayne.”
Now he’s the chairman of the Home Homeland Safety subcommittee on border enforcement. Neither Mr. Higgins nor Mr. Johnson responded to requests for remark about his podcast look.
The outspoken Louisianian has lengthy trafficked in conspiracy theories, however the podcast interview that aired this week, which he promoted on social media, lined an unusually wide selection of them.
For example, Mr. Higgins stated it was “very suspicious” that whereas votes within the presidential election have been being counted, Joseph R. Biden Jr. overtook Mr. Trump in sure key states.
Describing the frustration of Trump supporters forward of Jan. 6, he stated, “We have been witnessing the loss of life of our republic.”
There isn’t a proof of widespread voter fraud within the 2020 election. That was a lie Mr. Trump instructed after he misplaced.
Mr. Higgins then laid out a protracted and convoluted concept that federal legislation enforcement embedded itself in numerous teams of Trump supporters across the nation after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — whose origins he stated have been suspicious on their very own — riled them up after which inspired them to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The unique seeds of riotous or unlawful or occupation habits amongst these teams have been planted by the F.B.I.-embedded brokers in these teams,” Mr. Higgins claimed.
Actually, it was Mr. Trump who referred to as for his supporters to amass in Washington on Jan. 6, telling them, “Be there, will probably be wild!”
No Jan. 6 defendant has efficiently argued entrapment as a protection in court docket. Even a lawyer for the Proud Boys extremist group, whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in reference to the assault, stood up in court docket final 12 months and referred to as that concept “slander.”
The truth that some F.B.I. informants have been within the crowd of tens of 1000’s has lengthy been identified, nevertheless it doesn’t counsel the federal authorities was behind the assault. If something, it factors to the alternative: that the F.B.I. failed at utilizing the belongings it had in extremist organizations to be taught prematurely that an assault may be coming.
Steven M. D’Antuono, the previous chief of the F.B.I.’s Washington area workplace, testified earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee that he believed there could have been a “handful” of people that had beforehand served as informants for area workplaces who have been within the crowd that day. However, he stated, that they had not been requested by the bureau to attend.
Many of the identified informants in far-right teams just like the Proud Boys weren’t, by their very own accounts, recruited by the F.B.I. to disclose secrets and techniques about their very own organizations. As an alternative, they’ve stated they have been approached by the bureau to share what they knew about leftist actions like antifa.
One of many F.B.I. informants within the crowd on Jan. 6 was James Ehren Knowles, a member of the Proud Boys Kansas Metropolis chapter. Proper-wing politicians and pundits have sought to spin Mr. Knowles’s presence on the Capitol right into a narrative suggesting that the bureau used covert operatives to instigate the riot, however he instructed a really totally different story beneath oath through the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial.
Mr. Knowles testified that he was not performing “on the course of the F.B.I.” that day, however had joined the group as a member of the far-right group — or what a prosecutor described as “an impartial human” making his personal choices.
Mr. Higgins stated his claims of “ghost buses” got here from a whistle-blower who stated he noticed two white tour buses at Union Station early within the morning on Jan. 6, which later disappeared. Tour buses carrying guests to Washington are a virtually omnipresent sight within the space, particularly on days when giant occasions — resembling Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 — are deliberate.
“We don’t know what occurred to them,” Mr. Higgins stated ominously through the podcast. “I don’t run the F.B.I., man.”
Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, has stated unequivocally that his company had no position in inflicting the riot on the Capitol. “In case you are asking whether or not the violence on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a part of some operation orchestrated by F.B.I. sources and/or brokers,” Mr. Wray stated, “the reply is emphatically no.”
As his podcast hosts sampled costly whiskey, Mr. Higgins claimed that the unreleased Capitol surveillance footage would clear the Jan. 6 rioters, and he stated he had entry to inside info from their trials.
“As soon as that is all out, then these J6 prosecutions are going to begin falling aside,” Mr. Higgins stated. “And also you’re going to see reversals of prosecution.”
However defendants and their legal professionals would have entry to the identical info, together with the Capitol safety footage within the possession of Home Republicans.
The Justice Division has charged greater than 1,350 folks in reference to the assault on the Capitol. The fees present a spread of culpability. Some, together with the chief of the Oath Keepers militia, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to prolonged jail phrases. Others have been charged with merely trespassing and acquired no jail sentence.
The movies additionally present a spread of approaches by cops in several conditions. Some fought a bloody battle to maintain rioters from breaching the constructing; some tried to make use of persuasion to get folks to go away the halls of Congress. Badly outnumbered, others are proven merely monitoring the group.
Six Capitol Law enforcement officials, out of a power of two,000, have been disciplined for his or her actions through the riot, together with for unbecoming conduct and failure to adjust to directives. However many extra fought strenuously to maintain the rioters out. About 150 cops have been injured through the assault.
