Top January 6 Conspiracist to Investigate Trump Shooting

House Speaker Mike Johnson has tapped a January 6 conspiracy theory-touting  Republican lawmaker to join a new bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.

Johnson unveiled his list of picks Monday, which included his fellow Louisiana Republican, MAGA Representative Clay Higgins.

Higgins subscribes to the outlandish far-right theory that “FBI informants” pretending to be Trump supporters descended on the U.S. capital the night before the deadly January 6 insurrection using “ghost buses.”

During a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee in November, Higgins raised this theory to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who “emphatically” denied his claims. As proof, Higgins pointed at a picture of buses parked outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C., the night before the attack, claiming that they were ghost vehicles, or vehicles with the windows painted over to keep their purpose secret.

“These buses are nefarious in nature and were filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters, deployed onto our capital on January 6,” Higgins insisted, saying he had “extensive evidence” about the two vehicles. 

When the committee’s Chairman Mark Green pushed Higgins to wrap it up, the Louisiana Republican warned: “Your day is coming, Mr. Wray.”

Higgins released a statement Monday about his new appointment. “I am honored to serve on the bipartisan Task Force on the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he said. “The American people demand answers, and we will use every tool at our disposal to reveal granular detail of what led to the attempted assassination, ensure accountability, and identify security failures. I look forward to working with my bipartisan colleagues to deliver the truth.”

If his previous statements are any indication, Higgins might be vulnerable to believing the far-right conspiracy theories about Trump’s brush with death. In fact, he’s already shared one.

“American Patriots are united behind President Trump,” Higgins wrote in a post on X, shortly after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The left will not stop MAGA Nation.”

Donald Trump is getting fed up with Fox News over the network simply doing its job.

“Why is FoxNews putting on Crazy Kamala Harris Rallies?” wrote Trump on Truth Social Monday afternoon.

Amid articles about Ted Cruz “safeguarding” schools from the Chinese Communist Party and Whoopi Goldberg reacting to “drag queens” at the Olympics, Trump couldn’t find enough Fox News articles sucking up to him. Earlier this month, Trump issued a similar complaint that the network wasn’t doing enough to help him, writing “STOP PUTTING ON THE ENEMY!”

In the past, Fox has done plenty to boost Trump, especially around his false claims of 2020 election fraud. That support cost them nearly $800 million to settle a lawsuit.

“Why do they allow the perverts at the failed and disgraced Lincoln Project to advertise on FoxNews? Even Mr. Kellyanne Conway, a man so badly hurt and humiliated by his wife (she must have done some really NASTY things to him, because he is CRAZY!), is advertising on FoxNews,” Trump continued Monday, referring to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway’s ex-husband, George Conway.

Trump seems to be playing willfully ignorant that Fox News has been the most-watched news network for more than 20 years, making it desirable for well-funded advertisers, in order to make the point that he’s frustrated about its supposed disloyalty.

It’s more likely that Trump is annoyed that Fox aired a favorability poll over the weekend that showed Harris leading over him in swing states.

“We have to WIN WITHOUT FOX!” wrote Trump.

How do the right-wing respond when they see white men, typically their most reliable supporters, powerfully mobilizing for Kamala Harris? Derogatory name-calling.

When a Harris campaign account announced Monday that registration for a “White Dudes for Kamala” event had surpassed 75,000 people, Donald Trump Jr. just had to weigh in.

“They should give it a more fitting name,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), suggesting instead, “Cucks for Kamala.”

Using a typical insult from alt-right internet trolls, Trump is implying that any man supporting Harris lets another man satisfy their wife in the bedroom.

Trump likely stole this particular joke about “white dudes” for Kamala being “cucks” specifically from far-right commentator Steven Crowder, who posted about the dig on X Monday morning. Crowder himself likely lifted the joke from the controversial website 4chan before that.

Trump’s insults came as a similar group, White Women for Kamala, continues to break fundraising records. The groups are modeling their fundraising efforts after that of Win With Black Women, which hosted a Zoom call last weekend that attracted close to 44,000 attendees and raised more than $1.5 million. By Friday, white women had raised over $8.5 million.

As affinity groups in support of Harris meet, strategize, and raise cash for the campaign, right-wing grifters, including the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, continue to attack the efforts, calling them “racist.”

Perhaps the Republicans are freaking out since Trump is losing the support of white male voters.

Threatened much?

New security footage from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot have revealed possible new crimes in Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election results.

Former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro and a Trump campaign staffer, G. Michael Brown, were caught on camera handing fake elector documents from Washington and Michigan to aides of Republican Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania on January 5.

The video corroborates what Chesebro admitted in a text message on January 6: that he dropped off fake elector documents to Kelly’s aides a day prior.

The documents ultimately didn’t get to Vice President Mike Pence, who was in charge of certifying the election results, thanks to the Senate parliamentarian refusing to accept the documents from Kelly’s aides. Bizarrely, after the documents were rejected, the aides wandered the halls on the second floor of the Capitol for a half-hour, waiting for instructions.

It’s bad news for Kelly—and even worse news for Chesebro, who is already in trouble in Michigan for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in that state. Chesebro was charged with felony fraud for his efforts to overturn Wisconsin’s presidential election results in June. He was named as a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector charges, where he is cooperating with the state and has pleaded guilty to planning the scheme there. He is reportedly also cooperating with prosecutors in Michigan and Wisconsin.

This new set of evidence could lead to new charges, as it apparently wasn’t previously uncovered by the House January 6 committee, according to journalist Jamie Dupree. And while Kelly’s role was known, the extent of his involvement in the fake electors plot was not. Aside from that, however, the footage shows how close Trump’s cronies got to overturning two key states’ elections, as only the Senate parliamentarian and Vice President Mike Pence stood in their way.

After President Joe Biden announced his plan to rein in Supreme Court corruption Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson promised to stand in his way.

Johnson accused Biden and other Democrats of trying to “change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions.”

Biden’s plan calls for setting term limits for justices at 18 years and enforcing a binding code of conduct that would require justices “to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.” Further, Biden also seeks to undo the court’s recent “presidential immunity” decision through a constitutional amendment called the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment.”

Johnson is probably mostly taking issue with the last point, but he is happy to slam Biden on any and all proposed tweaks, considering his repeated attempts to shield Donald Trump from prison. Johnson slammed the reforms as “ongoing efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court,” claiming they would “tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.”

Leonard Leo, the co-chairman of the right-wing Federalist Society, was eager to back up Johnson and criticize the Biden administration on the issue of Supreme Court reform.

“No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is about undue influence,” Leo said. “It’s about Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with.”

Unfortunately for Johnson’s argument, the damage to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy has already been done. A poll conducted last year by NPR, PBS NewsHour, and the Marist Institute found that nearly two-thirds of Americans lack confidence in the high court, the lowest number since the poll was first conducted in 2018.

Sixty-eight percent of people said they thought the justices should have term limits. These results spanned the political spectrum. So, actually, Biden’s suggested reforms might boost public opinion of the Supreme Court.

While Biden says he looks forward to working with Congress on the plan to “prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy,” it seems like the House speaker has no interest in hearing him out.

“This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House,” promised Johnson.