Lara Logan’s Rest of the Story: Clay Higgins

This latest episode of Lara Logan’s Rest of the Story documentary series about the events of January 6th features Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins, who was a police captain and crime investigator for many years.

Based on all the evidence that he has seen, Higgins believes that the January 6th Capitol Riot was staged and fomented by the FBI.

Higgins says that there were two buses that were the first to arrive at Union Station in Washington DC on January 6th at 5AM. They had been sloppily painted white and had no markings and they were loaded with large, strapping men who stayed inside the buses, as did the drivers. Higgins believes these men were all FBI assets.

He also refers to as-yet unreleased J6 footage he’s seen of police officers – Capitol Police or Metro Police or both – entering rooms and coming out dressed as Trump supporters and construction workers.

Higgins says that the FBI had already been infiltrating online chat groups of people who were chafing against the COVID lockdowns and mandates, many of them peopled with Trump supporters who later attended the January 6th rally. So many of those who attended the January 6th rally had already been under FBI surveillance for months.

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TRANSCRIPT

Lara – studio intro

We’re breaking with our regular series to bring you a rare, in-depth interview with a man who is no stranger to controversy and doesn’t seem to give a damn what people think of him. Clay Higgins has gone from cop to congressman. And along the way, did things law enforcement officers don’t normally do, like the way he delivered his message in crime stopper videos that earned him the name the “Cajun John Wayne.”

If you look him up online, you’ll find no shortage of articles condemning Clay Higgins as a far-right conspiracy theorist, peddling in crazy, unfounded ideas about January 6th. Then again, these are the same people who told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation and President Donald Trump was a Russian spy. Simply put, they often lie and we don’t care what they think.

We know we’ve been deceived about January 6th because the narrative has shifted. For example, we now know from court cases and the FBI itself that the bureau did have undercover assets on the ground. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to speak to Representative Higgins. He’s one of the few in Congress who’s challenged the insurrection narrative from the start and as a former law enforcement officer himself knows a thing or two about investigations.

Powerful people who dominate the flow of information don’t want you to hear what he has to say or what he’s learned over the past two and a half years. That alone seems like a compelling reason for us to find out.

(Interview begins)

Lara: This is a letter from Bennie Thompson, who was chairman of the January 6th Select Committee, and he sent this to TSA, to the Honorable David Pekoske, who’s the administrator for TSA.

They want a briefing on “efforts to address the travel of white supremacists and other domestic terrorist groups. Options for quickly denying air carrier service to individuals posing a potential threat, and current status of efforts to identify and add to watchlists.” How far does this go?

Clay: That letter was the beginning of an executive action by the TSA to use its authority to instruct America’s air marshals to track and follow Trump supporters that have been charged with no crime. They were guilty only of – of arriving by air into D.C. on January 4th, fifth or sixth. And those – those manifest were turned over to the FBI.

The FBI went through those manifest. And every American that they identified, that the FBI identified as a Trump supporter, that was on those manifest was added to the FBI’s suspected domestic terrorist watch list. The FBI create the profile on those people – a suspected terrorist profile, and then the TSA administrator used his authority to instruct air the Marshals of America to track those Americans wherever they fly and

Lara: Still today?

Clay: It’s still happening. This is who our air marshals are following, the Trump supporters and that letter signed by Bennie Thompson, who was chair of the J6 Select Committee and signed by John Katko, who at the time was a ranking member.

Lara: A Republican.

Clay: He was the lead Republican of the Homeland Security Committee advising the- the Pekoske, the TSA senior guy to use all of that authority to track Trump supporters that have not been charged with a crime. They were guilty only of arriving in D.C. by air.

Lara: And every time they fly, they’re being tracked?

Clay: That’s right.

Lara: If they have never been convicted of terrorism, why are they on the terror watch list? It’s a violation of the First Amendment. They exercise their First Amendment rights. They’re being punished for it. It’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment. I mean, how many laws does this violate? How many rights does this violate? This is not a free country.

Lara: You’re not a free country where you’re tracked by air marshals, by the way, at taxpayer expense. And we’re not talking about an insignificant expense. Teams of three air marshals tracing people all over the country? You’re putting physical detail onto people.

Clay: That’s right

Lara: That’s the most expensive form of surveillance that exists.

Clay: Let me say – let me clarify. It’s very comforting to Americans to think that there’s, there might be an air marshal on your flight.

Lara: Not if they’re tracking you for your political beliefs.

Clay: Well, not if they’re being used for nefarious purposes. But the people that are complaining about this are the air marshals themselves, digital whistleblowers that are coming forward to tell a congressman that they felt would pay attention.

Lara: This has been going on since January ‘21 and you just found out about it. What else is going on, that we don’t know about?

Clay: We don’t know, but I’m telling you, we’re in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against the American people. I am not frightened of these people. I’ve spent my life serving others and and I love my country. This thing is not going to just slip away. They’re not going to take us without a fight.

And I’m going to fight legally and peacefully and within the parameters of the Constitution that I’ve sworn to serve, but they’re going down. These – these men, and their high perch in there, their position of power and authority and are walking upon our entire history, our deepest core principles. They’re not going to get away with it.

Lara: They have so far.

Clay: We’ll see.

Lara: Powerful people in this country. They want to make sure no one hears your voice. They want everyone to look at you like a far-right, crazy conspiracy theorist. Is that who you are?

Clay: No, m’am. I’m a regular American man. I’m an investigator – police officer by background. I’m going to continue to speak the truth, whether anybody likes it or not.

Lara: You’ve always been controversial. I mean, even when you were in law enforcement, you did those crimestopper videos that went viral. People loved them. You got a lot of heat for them, too. (Plays video).

Was that your idea with you? Were you the reason behind that?

Clay: Those videos, those public service announcements were part of my job that the sheriff asked me to perform.

Lara: Because you were the press officer? Public affairs person?

Clay: Public service, but that was a late in my career. I didn’t ask for that position, I had been a swat cop for long time. In fact, when the sheriff asked me to to take that role, I first I thought he was joking. And I told the sheriff, “I don’t know how to do that.” and he said, “well there, it’s easy.”

And you show up where the TV people tell you to show up and you stand where they tell you to stand and somebody holds the script for you and you read it. I did that a couple of weeks. I read the script, but I was uncomfortable with that because it wasn’t real. It wasn’t reflective of what I had been telling actual suspects for many years.

In the dead of night. That direct conversation that a lone cop will have, whether a young man has taken a wrong turn in life and asked to be arrested. That’s a very special communication for a good cop.

Lara: How do you do that, Clay? How do you have that conversation?

Clay: Well, you speak candidly and honestly and from your heart with compassion, but discipline and confidence. I mean, if – if I show up in your life at 2:00 in the morning, it is not because you’ve had a good day. I don’t consider you to be a bad man. You’ve just done something that has crossed a line and – according to statute, and I’m ‘a help you through the booking process and hopefully lead you to a better day.

Their only path really to freedom was through my jail and – and real freedom. Spiritual freedom would – would be if they could break the bonds of darkness, you know. So the way I deliver the message when I began having to record video segments, I just communicated in that same honest manner. And – and what started happening is people started turning themselves in.

Lara: People responded. And even beyond your little sheriff’s department in Louisiana.

Clay: It was big.

Lara: Right?

Clay: Worldwide. Some of those videos, wh- they were translated in eight languages, I’m told. IT people told me they were viewed 150 million times across the world.

Lara: No one had seen anything like it.

Clay: It was just honesty. And that’s what I do in Congress.

Lara: Well, there is another video of you that went viral not so long ago, which is when you at that press conference on the Hill and that activist kept coming up and you leaned in and took your sunglasses down, you told him, “I’m going to give you an interview. I’ll give you what you want, but this is what you got to do.” And then he came back.

Clay: You had a Freedom Caucus press conference immediately following a Bernie Sanders-like rally. So they had, you know, not necessarily a good mix. You – one could anticipate there might be some activists there that that would not necessarily agree with the kind of things we were saying in our in our press conference. And one of those little fellas figured out there was no police around.

Clay: So he wanted to be more aggressive than he should have been. (Lara plays video).

And he came on and saw the barriers, you know, into the press area. He was not a journalist.

Lara: He was walking right between the group of congressmen.

Clay: Yeah, he came – he was trying to get around to Lauren Boebert and I had already dressed him down a little bit and put him in a box.

That didn’t last but maybe a minute and he decided to get even more aggressive, so I just – I had to escort him out of the area. I turned him over to the police. That was the end of it.

Lara: I like the way you say “escort him out.” You basically picked him up and walked him over and put him down.

Clay: That was an escort.

Lara: That’s a Clay Higgins escort?

Clay: That’s a Clay Higgins escort, Yeah.

Lara: And you stayed very calm and said, “Calm yourself.”

Clay: Calm down, son.

Lara: It sounded like you’d said those words before.

Clay: Yeah, I’ve said them before. Kind of where we are as a nation right now. It calls for calm consideration and response to the oppression that we face from within. It’s – it’s quite nefarious.

Lara: Tell me what you mean. What do we face as a nation?

Clay: Generationally, we have allowed our federal law enforcement agencies to gradually become commanded by corrupted men, and they’ve been corrupted not so much by money, but by power. And that power really began manifesting itself insidiously with The FBI and DOJ and our intelligence services since 9/11, since the Patriot Act. We gave them great authorities and power.

Those powers are no longer being – being used to thwart terrorists. They’re being used to oppress the individual rights and freedoms of regular Americans like me and like the citizens I’ve sworn to serve. So I have a problem with that.

Lara: The counter to that would be these are not ordinary citizens. These are domestic terrorists. Because that’s, I mean, it’s very clear from Christopher Wray, the letter that he wrote about parents going to school board meetings that need to be investigated as terrorists. You speak at a Moms for Liberty event today, you get targeted by the Anti-Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center or someone like that as a domestic terrorist. And these organizations are working very closely with not just social media companies, but with law enforcement.

Clay: Regular patriotic American men and women are not terrorists. Let me say the factions within our highest levels of federal law enforcement – And I and I and I – FBI and DOJ and intelligence services, these corrupted men we’re discussing, they could be more readily identified and more accurately described as domestic terrorists than – than me. They’re the ones treading upon my individual rights and freedoms. They’re the ones that’s spying on – on Americans. They’re the ones traveling uh great distances to, to insert themselves into the lives of Americans that are just communicating freely, as is our right online or anywhere else, at meetings as we congregate and gather.

Lara: What about those who say your, your right to gather and uh have a conversation doesn’t give you a right to assault police officers and disrupt Congress and so on?

Clay: I don’t support battery on police officers or, uh, nor – nor violent disruption of – of government operations, but I will remind everyone that a free American has a right to resist an unlawful arrest.

Lara: At the last hearing where you addressed Christopher Wray, you produced a photograph of what you called “ghost buses.” Your point really was that they’re unmarked vehicles full of individuals that have not been explained. Is that right?

Clay: A “ghost vehicle” in law enforcement is not an uncommon reference. It’s vehicle has been purposefully concealed to – to whereby it’s not easy to identify. So no license plate. It’s been painted over its original cover. In this case, these two buses were totally painted white, like a cheap, vast overspray over all of the markings. So when you have two charter buses show up, the very first buses to show up in Union Station on January 6th…

Lara: Around 5 a.m.?

Clay: Around 5 a.m. The initial witness, another charter bus owner, arrived at – at 5:20. He thought he would be the first to arrive because he knew the schedule of all the other charter buses and he knew that most the buses would begin arriving around 6. So this charter bus operator was very experienced man. Very squared away. When he arrived with his couple of buses, these two white buses were – were to his surprise already there, and he immediately noticed that these buses were odd because they were totally painted over. It was a bad paint job. There was no markings, no phone numbers, no company name, totally outside the parameters of the way charter buses are required to operate and by law. So he said, “these buses are weird” and no one was getting out.

Clay: So something else that happens within that charter bus driver community is the drivers know each other. The passengers may stay on a bus if they’re especially in a parking lot, and not ready to disembark yet.

Lara: Sure.

Clay: The passengers might stay on a bus, but the bus drivers get off and they talk to each other.

They talk to the other bus drivers. So there are things that happen normally that the absence of that happening was odd. So he was suspicious enough of these buses as a professional, that he collected some digital evidence of those buses and then estimated with him and – and other eyewitnesses between 40 and 50 guys that they described as “Trump supporters.”

They all disembarked from the bus and they gathered in front of – of the two buses and they had like some kind of discussion, a briefing like the way a military leader would address his troops.

Lara: Yeah, they call it a huddle.

Clay: And then they together went to the escalators and up into Union Station and were gone.

Lara: And they were all men?

Clay: They were all men in all the Trump regalia. These men were in really good shape. They made comments like, “Wow, these are real serious Trump supporters. These guys” and they said they all had elbow pads and knee pads. And least they appeared like they had common equipment, but they were not in uniform, but they – they behaved in a uniform manner.

And we intend to get all of that video evidence from Union Station, from the escalators, from the parking lot. We have other eyewitnesses, much to the chagrin of everybody that was in those buses and everyone who commanded them to be there. We’ve identified one of those buses. And you know what that means? That means that’s their ass, because a bus is a serial numbered vehicle.

And in America, the change of ownership of a serial numbered vehicle…

Lara: Is recorded.

Clay: Is documented. So that means we can begin to trace from the original owner of that bus where it was sold and who bought it, and then who it was leased to and where it disappeared. And then eventually those buses were removed from the Union Station and we’re going to document all of that.

Lara: So you believe that those buses held undercover officers, not informants? Correct?

Clay: I feel very, very confident that – that everybody that was on those two buses were FBI assets.

And I have a high degree of belief there were actual FBI agents. And – and I’m, I’m sorry to say, ma’am, my objective conclusion is that – that senior officials at the at the FBI were deeply involved there.

Clay: You had a combination of FBI confidential informants either registered, unregistered – or a volunteer informant, or actual FBI agents depending upon a group and how significant a group was. Like the agents inserted in say the Proud Boys groups that we’re going to come to D.C. Those are most probably actual FBI agents. Whereas some, you know, random Facebook group of patriots from Arizona or something were most likely an informant.

So it would still fall under the umbrella of an “FBI asset” if they were communicating with the FBI – data that they were harvesting and information that they were recording and delivering it to the FBI, screenshots of text chats or actual recordings of phone calls, things like that – that they were delivering to the FBI, all part of the web of surveillance of the American people.

Lara: What have you seen? What can you tell us about? I know you can’t get ahead of everything. I know there’s limitations on some of this, but can you tell us anything?

Clay: I can tell you that, that the FBI had, had established a formula in 2020 that, that they pursued with all their – their power and authority to infiltrate groups across the country of Americans that were essential discussing online. They’d formed online groups.

Lara: Like chat rooms?

Clay: Yeah, like chat rooms.

Lara: Discord and Telegram.

Clay: Etc. to discuss their frustrations with COVID oppression and so the FBI identified groups and and – and infiltrated them with undercover operations that were very effective and they began planting seeds of discord. If you track the – the text threads, which I’ve – I’ve seen some of again, through evidence that I’ve been able to witness, but I cannot, I cannot share publicly because it would be in violation of – of court orders.

Lara: But to be clear, this is video you’ve seen with your own eyes?

Clay: Yes, ma’am. The evidence that was in criminal cases.

Lara: Is this what it’s based on? It’s based on the digital evidence, what you have on camera and supporting evidence for that and other kinds?

Clay: Yeah, eyewitness testimony, sworn testimony, affidavits, text messages, emails, and digital – digital footage. Yes, ma’am.

Lara: A lot of people would say “Clay, you’re lawman, right? That’s what we do. We infiltrate groups where we perceive there to be a threat or potential of crime being committed. We have undercover officers. We have undercover assets like informants. This is the bread and butter of law enforcement. What are you complaining about?”

Clay: They were the criminals. They were the threat.

Lara: Based on what?

Clay: We were just Americans. We were Americans that were that were angry and – and we were enraged that our freedoms were being oppressed and that FBI and the powers that had become corrupted, the those – those bad actors within the federal government that had this authority, they said “these Americans, how dare those Americans challenge the oppression that we’re putting upon them.”

Lara: Can you share any of the messages yet that you have said you traced back to FBI undercovers inside these groups and these chats?

Clay: No m’am.

Lara: Will you share it when you can?

Clay: The moment that I’m able to reveal that – that stuff, I will.

Lara: You said specifically that you saw that there were undercover police officers who were inside the Capitol before any of the protesters came in.

Clay: That’s right.

Lara: How do you know that? And can you give us any sense of what that means?

Clay: I mean, if you clearly have men dressed as Trump supporters walking around inside the Capitol on the other side of police officers who are, to one extent or another, not engaged with them, like they’re not concerned about them.

Lara: Right.

Clay: Then you have a set of closed doors like exterior doors and interior doors closed, and you have police officers positioned outside and then in between the two doors and then on the inside of the second set of doors – doors weren’t open yet.

Lara: What time was this?

Clay: This was – a couple of videos that Trump was still speaking and then on the inside, it looked like Trump supporters walking around in groups of five or six, so these were clearly separated physically and by doors and by police officers from the guys on the outside.

Any reasonable man would come to the conclusion– When you have videos of the doors being opened and police officers allowing Trump supporters that had gathered at the door to now enter, no violence, just walking in. “Just come on in, some fist bumps, and come in.” A second set of doors open, then there’s a group of Trump supporters on the steps, interior steps saying, “Come on this way, this way.”

Lara: What does that tell you?

Clay: Any reasonable man would look at that and say this was a coordinated effort by a law enforcement to have these people come in to. So who was that? They had to be, you know, I think as nefarious forces and part of the whole agenda of the – of the FBI with their involvement of this whole thing. We have other evidence, specific observations of police officers, Capitol police or metro, both entering rooms and here in the Capitol in uniform and coming out as Trump supporters and construction workers.

Lara: You’ve seen that?

Clay: Yeah, so…

Lara: Why has that video not been released yet?

Clay: One would say that’s a pretty good clue.

Lara: Yeah.

Clay: The other reason that we believe it’s just practical to have someone who knows how to get around, I mean, you know yourself, you can’t walk around his place. You have to be here for years and years.

Lara: The capitol is a maze.

Clay: That’s right. And it’s incredibly difficult to get around. You have to know where you’re going.

Clay: You had to have people that were very familiar with the the capital itself in order to lead to random groups of citizens that have come from every corner of the country in many cases, never been to D.C. before, much less walked around in the capital. So it – it just makes sense that the Trump supporters that were leading the way and were clearly already inside the capital before the doors were open, were working in coordination with the FBI agents and assets that were embedded into the crowd.

In some cases in these groups had been embedded for months. This is ugly stuff we’re discussing, but the American people deserve to know the truth and I intend to see that it happens.

Lara: A lot of people just won’t believe it without – they have to see the evidence or they just don’t believe you.

Clay: I don’t want to believe these things. I’ve been a cop for a long time, since I was a little boy. The FBI shield was – that was the baddest ass badge a cop could ever earn. It was an honored achievement to become an FBI agent so it’s with great pain I describe the corruption that has taken hold within our FBI, and we intend to clean it up because these rank-and-file FBI agents, let me tell you that a lot of these men and women are quite disturbed about what has happened to their beloved FBI. Same thing inside the DOJ. We have an obligation as Americans to embrace truth, whether it’s ugly or not, so that we can take corrective action.

Lara: Okay so you have the floor now, but you don’t know how much longer you have it for, right? And you don’t have forever.

Clay: We don’t.

Lara: And it’s been how long?

Clay: 10 months.

Lara: 10 months?

Clay: Some things have not happened that – that – that the conservatives within the people’s house would like to happen. We’ve had some disagreements internally regarding who shall be our speaker. We just had to go through what we went through in order to arrive at that particular junction of American history where a man like Mike Johnson became our speaker. Mike gets it, that all the digital evidence of for instance J6 has to be released to the American people, talking about altogether between 40 and 50,000 hours of digital evidence.

No one has a staff large enough to go through that evidence. So it has to be crowdsourced, have to give this stuff to the American people. And then the truth will be revealed, clip by clip.

Lara: Mike Johnson has released precisely 12 and a half thousand hours of that 40,000, and he’s not releasing 5%, which is 2,000 hours. Whether it’s for a good reason or a bad reason, it provides opportunity to hide whatever you want in those 2,000 hours. I’m not saying he’s hiding something because I don’t know.

Lara: But I’m just saying is when you’re withholding 2,000 hours, you can put whatever you want in that 2,000 hours. There are American citizens who are sitting in jail, some of them for three years without a trial. People have gone to solitary confinement for misdemeanor charges, nonviolent misdemeanor charges.

They’re still arresting people. You expect people to go to an election and vote when they don’t even have answers on their questions on the last election. And over time, more and more and more evidence is coming out in court cases. Right? Judges that wouldn’t take those cases when the light was on them. Now they’re not able to avoid them anymore. So what are you waiting for?

The people who don’t want the truth out have complete information dominance.

Right? You come out with something, you have a committee hearing? Dismissed. Conspiracy theories. “Ah Higgins. He’s a far right lunatic. Now, you know, don’t listen to him.” And so there are millions of people in this country that read The New York Times every day. Some of them were in this room, right? They hear you saying this and they think you’re just a nut.

You’re just a nut. And where’s the evidence or Mike Johnson’s going to release it? What is he waiting for?

Clay: The truth of what happened on those days, J 4 or 5 and 6 is in the digital evidence that Speaker Johnson has control of. And thank God we have a speaker who has stated that he is committed to release all of that data. Now he’s restrained to the extent that he’s restrained by attorneys, but he’s an attorney himself. And, and we’ll see. When you when you say not going to release at all, I say, let’s see.

Lara: Well, those were his words, not mine.

Clay: Well, I know the man’s heart and it is pure and he knows that American needs full truth. I believe, I speak on behalf of “we the people” when I say we demand full release. The whole thing. Not just from the Capitol grounds and within the Capitol proper by the way. We want it all. We want all the DC Metro digital evidence. We need evidence from Union Station and and some other spots that we’ve identified.

Lara: Can you tell me any of those spots that you’ve identified, Union Station being one. What other the spots?

Clay: The parking areas and, and areas for dismemberment.

Lara: What do you mean by that?

Clay: The escalator areas where you can connect the dots from agents disembarking from vehicles and going either on foot to their stations and their teams of three and four and five, or getting in other vehicles that were dispersed and where some actions were noted that were born of of those vehicles, where some actions were taken, nefarious stuff.

Lara: What can potentially happen there? If you were a J6 defendant who’s in prison or was convicted of a crime, but you find out later that – that Brady material was withheld from you in violation of the law, is there legal redress for you here?

Clay: Yeah, that would flip the case. The bottom line is that if we are successful, if Mike Johnson is successful at getting all the digital evidence from J4, 5, and 6 released entirely to the American people, including the body cam footage of – of – of every police officer that was either operating in uniform or not in uniform, shall we say, then all these J6 I call “persecutions”, these political prisoners, those cases will be flipped because it’s exculpatory evidence that’s been withheld and the prosecution has a legal responsibility to provide exculpatory evidence that they’re in possession of to the defense. In this case, in every one of these J6 cases that have been prosecuted, the FBI and the DOJ has most certainly been in possession of all the digital evidence that we’re describing right now. If we’re successful at getting that evidence released to the American people, the American people are going to be stunned into acceptance of the reality that our FBI and our DOJ, and in some cases, head people in our intelligence services, have been corrupted by power.

Lara: Have you seen all the video? I know it’s a lot.

Clay: It’s a lot.

Lara: Have you seen the key parts?

Clay: I’ve seen many segments of video that most Americans have not seen, that is incredibly condemning. They’re so desperate to keep this digital evidence away from Americans, just regular citizen’s review, that they’re going through quite complex legal maneuvers to stop Americans from viewing this evidence. Every American that’s watching this should ask themselves why. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, ask yourself why.

Lara: Why do you think?

Clay: Why are you concealing that evidence from me? Why can’t I see that? It’s video from my own capital. People have a tendency to forget, especially my liberal brothers and sisters across the country. This is your country. This is your capital. You have the right to know what actually happened in 2020 in the months preceding J4, 5, and 6. You have the right to see the digital evidence of what truly happened in your capital on January 4th, 5th, and 6th. This is my position.