Even by a conspiracy theorist’s requirements, the wild claims made by Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, stand out.
The hard-right congressman, now in his fourth time period within the House, has mentioned that “ghost buses” took agent provocateurs to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to instigate the riot. He has claimed that the federal authorities is waging a “civil war” in opposition to Texas. And he has known as the legal fees in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump for mishandling categorised paperwork a “perimeter probe from the oppressors.”
But removed from relegating Mr. Higgins to the perimeter of their more and more fractious convention, House 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, lots of which painting regulation enforcement and the federal government in an evil, conspiratorial gentle.
This week, in a prolonged podcast interview, he expounded at size on his perception — primarily based, he mentioned, on his personal intensive investigation and proof that solely he has been capable of see — that federal regulation enforcement officers entrapped Mr. Trump’s supporters into violently attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was repeating a conspiracy principle 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 brand 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 mentioned was a plot by the federal government to infiltrate pro-Trump on-line boards and urge members to have interaction in “riotous” conduct, as he put it.
Finally, he mentioned, 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 most recent reminder that, greater than three years after the assault, right-wing Republicans at each stage proceed to unfold falsehoods about what occurred on Jan. 6 and are actually searching 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 performed his personal investigation into what occurred that day. He predicted that after House Republicans end posting safety footage of the assault on-line, fees in opposition to Jan. 6 defendants would crumble.
“The whole thing,” Mr. Higgins mentioned, “was a nefarious agenda to entrap MAGA Americans.”
Mr. Higgins, who earlier than coming to Congress was accused of utilizing pointless drive when he was a police officer, later gained fame by a collection of well-liked movies that earned him the nickname “Cajun John Wayne.”
Now he’s the chairman of the House Homeland Security 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 big selection of them.
For occasion, Mr. Higgins mentioned 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 mentioned, “We were witnessing the death of our republic.”
There isn’t any 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 principle that federal regulation enforcement embedded itself in varied teams of Trump supporters across the nation after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — whose origins he mentioned have been suspicious on their very own — riled them up after which inspired them to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“The original seeds of riotous or illegal or occupation behavior amongst these groups were planted by the F.B.I.-embedded agents in those groups,” Mr. Higgins claimed.
In reality, it was Mr. Trump who known as for his supporters to amass in Washington on Jan. 6, telling them, “Be there, will be wild!”
No Jan. 6 defendant has efficiently argued entrapment as a protection in courtroom. 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 courtroom final yr and known as that principle “slander.”
The undeniable fact that some F.B.I. informants have been within the crowd of tens of hundreds has lengthy been recognized, however it doesn’t recommend 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 study upfront that an assault could be coming.
Steven M. D’Antuono, the previous chief of the F.B.I.’s Washington subject workplace, testified earlier than the House Judiciary Committee that he believed there might have been a “handful” of people that had beforehand served as informants for subject places of work who have been within the crowd that day. But, he mentioned, they’d not been requested by the bureau to attend.
Most of the recognized 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. Instead, they’ve mentioned they have been approached by the bureau to share what they knew about leftist actions like antifa.
One of the F.B.I. informants within the crowd on Jan. 6 was James Ehren Knowles, a member of the Proud Boys Kansas City chapter. Right-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 completely different story below oath through the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial.
Mr. Knowles testified that he was not performing “at the direction 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 independent human” making his personal choices.
Mr. Higgins mentioned his claims of “ghost buses” got here from a whistle-blower who mentioned 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 massive occasions — reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 — are deliberate.
“We don’t know what happened to them,” Mr. Higgins mentioned ominously through the podcast. “I don’t run the F.B.I., man.”
Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, has mentioned unequivocally that his company had no position in inflicting the riot on the Capitol. “If you are asking whether the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by F.B.I. sources and/or agents,” Mr. Wray mentioned, “the answer 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 mentioned he had entry to inside data from their trials.
“Once this is all out, then these J6 prosecutions are going to start falling apart,” Mr. Higgins mentioned. “And you’re going to see reversals of prosecution.”
But defendants and their attorneys would have entry to the identical data, together with the Capitol safety footage within the possession of House Republicans.
The Justice Department 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 law enforcement officials 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 depart the halls of Congress. Badly outnumbered, others are proven merely monitoring the group.
Six Capitol Police officers, out of a drive 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. But many extra fought strenuously to maintain the rioters out. About 150 law enforcement officials have been injured through the assault.
Source: www.nytimes.com