Dr. Talcott is a Fellow of Philosophy and the Graduate Dean of New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. He joined the faculty in 2023, having taught at The King's College in New York City for twelve years, first as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and then as an Associate Professor of Philosophy. His Ph.D. is from Indiana University, Bloomington, and his undergraduate BA is from Hillsdale College. His research focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Plato, though he also works on a range of topics in the field of ethics. His publications have appeared in numerous outlets including Public Discourse, Eikon: A Journal of Biblical Anthropology, Human Life Review, and First Things online. He has presented papers at meetings of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, and the Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Plato, published by P&R Publishing.
Dr. Talcott and his wife, Anna, have six children: two sons and four daughters. While living on the East Coast, he served as a Ruling Elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Millburn and Short Hills (PCA), including a 2-year stint as moderator of the West Hudson Presbytery of the PCA. From 2014-2016 he was a member of the Board of Education of Boonton, NJ.

Jason Jimenez is the founder and president of Stand Strong Ministries and a faculty member at Summit Ministries. He is a bestselling author and national speaker, specializing in biblical worldview training, family ministry, and church leadership. In 2018, he launched the I Will Stand Strong movement (www.IWillStandStrong.org) to reach thousands of young people online with the gospel.

On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, President Joe Biden and the Democrats still operate as if this one terrible afternoon is the No. 1 issue of the 2024 campaign.

Invoking George Washington, Biden warns that "democracy is on the ballot" in a reference to Trump and the Capitol riot.

This the smartest, best informed account of what actually happened on January 6th. Tucker Carlson interviews Congressman Clay Higgins.

Tucker [00:00:00] It has been exactly three years since January 6th, the events of January 6th, the racist insurrection that shocked this nation to its core more profoundly than anything since Pearl Harbor, plus the Civil War. And it has taken a while, honestly, even for people who aren’t on the side of the professional liars, to realize there’s something amiss about what happened that day, not just the response: The largest law
enforcement mobilization in the history of the United States. That was obviously disproportionate because it wasn’t the worst riot that year. Not even close. But the day itself, there was something about January 6th that didn’t feel right. And hovering over that day has remained the question to what extent was it a setup? And we still don’t really know. But what’s interesting is how few people have asked that entirely legitimate question. And one of the very few, really one of the only in the United States Congress is a member called Clay Higgins from Louisiana. And in case you haven’t seen this clip, it’s worth rewatching. This is from 2022 at a Homeland Security Committee hearing, where he asked it just directly of the FBI director. Watch.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:01:08] Did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the January 6th protesters on January 6th of 2021?

FBI Director Chris Wray [00:01:20] Well, Congressman, as I’m sure you can appreciate, I had to be very careful about what I can say about –

Rep Clay Higgins [00:01:26] Even now? Because that’s what you told us two years
ago.

FBI Director Chris Wray [00:01:30] May I finish? About when we do and do not and where we have and have not used confidential human sources. But to the extent that there’s a suggestion, for example, that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6th. That’s categorically false.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:01:47] Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6th, prior to the doors being open?

FBI Director Chris Wray [00:01:55] Again, I had to be very careful.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:01:57] It should be a no. Can you not tell the American people, “No, we did not have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters positioned inside the Capitol?”

FBI Director Chris Wray [00:02:08] You should not read anything into my decision not to share information.

Tucker [00:02:16] What a sleazy, repulsive, little authoritarian liar Chris Wray is. It’s obvious when you watch that tape. The sad part is so few tapes like that exist, because so few have confronted him directly and asked questions to which the entire country has a right to know the answer. Like that one. Clay Higgins did that. The congressman from Louisiana - Lafayette joins us in studio. Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:02:38] Thank you for having me Tucker.

Tucker [00:02:39] So that was over a year ago that you asked that question, which is a central question. And you asked it as I think is appropriate, without any embarrassment at all, on behalf of your constituents and the rest of the country. Are you any closer to the answer now?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:02:53] Well, we’re closer to being in a position where we can reveal the answers that we already have. Much of the evidence that we have compiled from investigative efforts over the course of the last couple of years, some officers, like my own sort of operate in silos of investigative endeavor. They have now been able to come together now that we have a Republican majority, and we have access to the staffs of the appropriate investigative committees. And so I sit on the Oversight Committee and we Republicans, we’re on that committee now. Therefore, we control the staff. So when you can magnify the efforts that individual members of Congress have of of within our own offices, when you can magnify those efforts by the the skill
and the numbers of staff from the committees, you get a lot of evidence reviewed professionally and aligned and assembled into especially a case file. And in this case, this is a big file because the involvement of certain actors. And you could say deep state actors within the federal government to set the stage for, uh, what happened and when J4, 5 and 6 and to entrap thousands of Americans from across the country and lure
them into this set stage on J4, 5 and 6. The people that were involved and that is quite a large web. So yes, sir, we do have a great deal of evidence compiled. And we’re gradually professionally rolling that evidence out.

Tucker [00:04:59] So you sort of answer the question right there in larger terms. You just said that elements within the federal government, I assume law enforcement, intel and military, and I’m using your words, “lured” Americans to Washington into what you called a trap.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:05:15] Yes, sir.

Tucker [00:05:17] So that’s a shocking... and I assume that’s a sober conclusion based on the evidence. That’s what you’re saying.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:05:24] That’s that would be my sober assessment as an investigator and I love my country and I’ve always been a staunch defender of the thin blue line. And I would proudly count the FBI amongst that number. They’re just like brothers to me. So to find that level of conspiratorial corruption at the highest levels of the FBI has been very troubling to me as a man, as a cop. And yet you follow the evidence wherever it leads. And this is what investigators do. So when I asked Christopher Wray that question and I already knew the answer. I had reviewed a compelling evidence that the FBI had assets, human assets dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol prior to the doors being open and the masses allowed in. Now, I knew that the FBI was deeply involved. I’d seen evidence, even at that time that the FBI had embedded themselves into various groups online across the country of Americans who were essentially voicing their their concerns and airing their grievances with each other about Covid oppression. And those Americans were targeted by the FBI
- almost universally Republicans and largely Trump supporters. But the FBI worked undercover to infiltrate those conversations and become a significant part of those individual Americans, uh, communications. And when you dig into the evidence that we’ve had revealed through through some criminal cases that I’ve followed and worked with the families of J6 political detainees and Americans that have been persecuted for
their involvement in the Capitol that day. And some of that evidence shockingly reveals that the FBI agents were operating undercover within the online groups across the country were the first ones to plant the seeds of suggestions of a more radical occupation of the Capitol. And they were sort of testing the waters of who amongst that group would begin acknowledging that, “You maybe we should do that. Maybe we should plan for an occupation like that” But if you look at the origins of those conversations, they they were started by the FBI, undercover guy that was operating inside the group. And then months later on January 4th, fifth and sixth, many of those Americans met for the first time in person when they gathered for the massive rally where American patriots assembled to object to everything that had happened during 2020: COVID oppression and the stunning results of what we believe was a compromised election cycle in November 2020. So Americans gathered at their own Capitol to appropriately air grievances and protest at their capital. But embedded
amongst their number was an FBI asset that had been working from within their group online for many months. So this was the level of a manipulative effort that the FBI invested into American citizenry and our assembly online to exercise our rights under the First Amendment. To talk to each other about whatever we want to talk about, including the insidious oppressions of Covid that we were suffering across the country.
And our concerns about where the election was going, the whole Mail-In ballot thing. We could see the stage was being set for a compromised election cycle, possibly. And to our horror, that’s what happened. So FBI had fingerprints on this thing from for many months prior to J4, 5 and 6.

Tucker [00:10:19] I want to go back to something you said in the first sentence, which is you have seen evidence, and that spurred your questions to Chris Wray, that there were FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters within the Capitol. So that is proof of entrapment, because, of course, the federal government could have prevented entry into the Capitol building. There aren’t that many doors. You work there, you know. But they allowed people in on purpose to entrap them. That’s what that proves, I think, does it not?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:10:47] Well, it’s certainly condemning. It’s another piece of the of the strategy that the government employed to sort of complete the entrapment of Americans that they had infiltrated and then prodded and provoked with online what did with the those original seeds planted of actions like, you know, what type of gear to wear and just in language that incited behavior that could go the wrong way, you know,
pushing actions of legal and legitimate peaceful protest to an edge where those Americans would likely not have gone had they not been been you know encouraged by the FBI plant amongst their number that they didn’t know was there. So by the time it was actually J6 and you had masses of Americans assembled outside the Capitol, like 99.9%, 100% peaceful. On the inside, you had FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters that knew their way around the Capitol.

Tucker [00:12:17] Before the doors opened?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:12:18] Before the doors opened or else how are you going to get around the Capitol? You’ve been there many times. You need a guide to get from whatever door you go in –

Tucker [00:12:26] It’s a labyrinth.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:12:26] Yeah, it’s a maze inside there. That’s right. So there’s no way Americans, most of which have never been to the Capitol... There’s no way they can come in some random door that gets opened and then get their way directly to the Statuary or the House Chamber or the Senate Chamber. It’s just not possible. So the FBI assets that were dressed as Trump supporters that were inside the Capitol were there, I believe, and evidence indicates that they were there to to specifically wave in the Trump supporters that had gathered outside the Capitol and the doors opened and they were allowed in and on the “oh there’s some more Trump supporters”; but really those were FBI assets, law enforcement assets that knew their way around the Capitol. And they waved those guys in, said, come on, follow us. And they’re the ones that led them on the path directly. How do you think a guy who has never been to the Capitol is going to come into the Capitol all amped up on emotion and make his way straight to Nancy Pelosi’s office. Come on. I couldn’t get to it. There’s no way. I’ve been there for seven years. You'd come in some random door to Capitol and make my way to
Nancy Pelosi’s –

Tucker [00:13:47] And everything is unmarked. I mean, those leadership offices are unmarked, so how you know that?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:13:51] It’s confusing to get around in the Capitol. Every American that has been there knows this. When you go on a tour, you bring your family to DC, you go through the Capitol, you have to have a guide. And on January 6th, the guides were FBI assets, law enforcement assets, and they were dressed as Trump supporters.

They were positioned inside the Capitol prior to the doors being open, so that the Americans that had assembled outside the Capitol, once allowed in, could be brought directly to the areas where the FBI, the DOJ and the deep State actors knew would be the most sort of condemning criminal action of Americans being inside the Capitol, protesting without permit and things. They knew they were setting the stage for arrest
and prosecution.

Tucker [00:14:56] It’s such a crime. Who planned this, do you think?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:15:01] I think factions planned this. I wouldn’t say “who” Tucker, because I don’t think there was one person that planned this, but I believe the faction of establishment liberals within the FBI and the Democrat Party and our intelligence services to another extent used their massive powers of surveillance investigative assets that they have across the country. Confidential informants, registered informants,
non-registered informers, voluntary informants. It’s a complex web of FBI assets across the country that can be activated. So if you have authority at some of the highest levels in the FBI...It doesn’t take much. The faction within the FBI and within our intelligence services that would coordinate with the most extreme liberal factions within the Democrat party that were desperate to keep Trump out of office and you know, worked
within the theater of operation, shall we say, that had been set by the COVID alleged medical emergencies nationwide and millions and millions of Mail-In ballots. There’s no daylight between the compromised election cycle of November 2020 and ultimately what happened on J6. So you ask who planned this. This would be the combination of several of the most extreme liberal, anti-Trump, anti-America First factions that were in
positions of authority within our our federal law enforcement organizations and the Democrat Party across the country.

Tucker [00:17:31] When you say that there were FBI assets in the crowd in the building beforehand and certainly outside, what's the scale of this? Are we talking like 10-20?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:17:46] No. Based upon some very conservative but like hard investigative effort...Evaluation of of the numbers from putting together eyewitnesses and videos and affidavit statement and whistleblower statements and court records that have been revealed through individual criminal cases where J6 defendants have been prosecuted and smart attorneys have forced admissions by the DOJ and the FBI. But those admissions have been sealed within the parameter of that criminal case by protective order, by the judge, so that I can’t share them. But I’ve seen them. So real hard, objective and conservative estimates would would put the number of FBI assets in the crowd outside and working inside at well over 200.

Tucker [00:19:01] 200?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:19:02] Yeah.

Tucker [00:19:02] So you were in law enforcement before you came to Congress, and the military as well. That’s an extraordinary number. Isn’t it?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:19:11] Well, no when you think about the scope of the operation. If you were going to do this, you would need that number –

Tucker [00:19:20] But relative to...Like when, I don’t know, Minneapolis burned down or when Saint John’s, the Episcopal Church across from the White House in Lafayette Square, was set ablaze and all the Secret Service agents were injured - Were there 200 FBI assets in the crowd among Antifa then?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:19:36] I don’t know how many undercover agents the FBI would have in a situation like that, but J6 was the final act prior to arrest and prosecution of Americans that were identified as Trump supporters. Their objective was to destroy the entire MAGA movement. To forever stain the patriotic fervor that was associated with the America First MAGA movement that had won in 2016 and we believe won again in 2020. And the establishment on both sides of both major parties were determined to smash that out of existence, not just by defeating Trump, but by destroying the reputations of the movement itself, by creating this narrative that was totally false but was heavily pushed that MAGA Republicans, America First Republicans were somehow a danger to our republic and a domestic terror threat. It’s a whole other story about what
the FBI has done attacking Americans as suspected domestic terrorists and following us as we travel across the country. But the bottom line is that 200...I believe that is a conservative number. Personally, I think there were many more, but a number that I’m comfortable going on record with is that we believe that there were easily 200 FBI undercover assets operating in the crowd, outside the Capitol, embedded into groups that entered the Capitol or provoked entry of the Capitol and working with FBI assets that would have included Metro Police and Capitol Police that were dresses as Trump supporters inside the Capitol, because those were the guys that knew their way around the Capitol. So given the scope of the operation and the number of doors where entry
was allowed or even encouraged and the number of people that were actually outside the Capitol and that entered, we believe 200 conservative number. Yes, sir.

Tucker [00:22:32] It’s shocking what you’re saying and confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about this. It’s clearly true. Did you come across any evidence that the DoD, the military, either Defense Intelligence Agency or National Guard or any part of the U.S. military played any role in this at all?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:22:51] I have not seen that. I’ve heard the echoes of that suspicion, and I have I have observed circumstantial evidence that that has been presented to me that I’ve reviewed. But to me, it does not rise to the level that I would call actionable from an investigative perspective. So there was some suspicion. But in law enforcement, the threshold you’re looking across is reasonable suspicion that would prompt a criminal investigation. And then the next threshold is probable cause which you need for arrest. Now of course, in our system, finally, the last threshold is conviction and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So I did review evidence regarding somesuspicions of military involvement in some way and I've reviewed some of that evidence that I've been able to get my hands on and I do not think that the military was involved.
Not at the level, most certainly not at the level of the FBI and over the course of all of 2020. And then on J4, 5, and 6, the FBI working in coordination with other law enforcement assets that they roped into the operation from Metro PD from D.C. and the Capitol Police was sort of tricked into participating with what the FBI had been staging for, you know, ten months.

Tucker [00:24:53] If you take three steps back, this is not democracy. So the federal agencies serve under the oversight of the elected president and then under the oversight of the elected Congress, their elected people get to make the decisions. You had a Republican president. You now have a Republican Congress. And neither one can get a straight answer from the FBI. No one has any control of the FBI. You're describing a government within a government.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:25:20] Well. In America, a question reasonable men would ask when we face a crisis like this, who investigates the investigators?

Tucker [00:25:37] Right.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:25:37] And the answer in Americas is Congress. So we have the responsibility to investigate through the appropriate committees, which would...We're certainly doing that now that we have a Republican majority in control of the committees, but we don't have the power to arrest. We can give criminal referrals based upon our investigative efforts, but we have to have a DOJ that's receptive to the criminal referrals. So we've hit quite a brick wall, have we not? And constitutionally, we have the
responsibility to investigate objectively and anyone that knows me know that's exactly what I'm pursuing. I'm not trying to create a crime to fit a narrative to blame on the FBI. I'm following the evidence and to my horror, it implicates our FBI at the highest level. And a conspiracy within our government at the highest level to create...to set the stage for a compromised election cycle in 2020. And then the actions that took place on J4, 5 and 6 and then the criminal investigation, arrest, and prosecution of Americans that they were able to entrap and document with the thousands of cameras that were operating that day and use that evidence that they knew they were setting up to investigate, arrest, and prosecute the Americans that they had entrapped. So Congress can investigate these things. And we are and we will reveal these horrific truths and we will have criminal referrals. But until you have a president running the executive branch that
will clean house at the DOJ and FBI at the highest levels and put American patriots in place that will be that will act upon the criminal referrals that Congress provides, then none of those guys are going to get arrested because they're not going to arrest themselves. And we don’t have arrest authority.

Tucker [00:28:09] I'm a little surprised and don't expect to be critical of your colleagues in the Republican conference but I mean, they do control the House. Impeachment is a thing. Chris Wray is still the FBI director. I watch Republicans, some of whom I know, chee the murder of Ashli Babbitt who was an unarmed woman less than 5'5'' by Michael Byrd. They were on Michael Byrd's side. And I have to say, for a lot of Republican voters, I count myself among them. Very clarifying. If you're cheering Ashli Babbitt's murder...shooting women now, that's okay, because she likes Trump? And the
Republicans are like, "Yeah, I was happy." Like a lot of them thought that. What the hell?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:28:46] Yeah, and that made me sick.

Tucker [00:28:50] Me too.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:28:51] You know, It's a great responsibility when you wear a badge in America and think about it...To be the designated servant of your community that has that has the, the authority to, uh. To deny the freedom of a fellow American in the land of the free. That's a heavy responsibility. So the escalation of force must be appropriate in order to effect a lawful arrest and and a bad shoot is the worst thing that an officer can possibly be involved in in his career. It's is is the thing of nightmares for good police officers. So to take what was from a law enforcement perspective was clearly a bad shoot because there are some basic rules you just cannot violate. You have to attempt to effect an arrest before you can go to deadly force. There was no attempt to arrest Ashli Babbitt. There are officers on the other side of the window she
was climbing through. There were officers on the interior side of the window she was climbing through. There was no indication...This had been going on for an hour. And there was no reports on the radio or anywhere else of of gunfights. So there was no reason at that point to expect that Ashli Babbitt or anybody else in the crowd was going to produce a firearm and start firing on police officers. Why? Because it had not happened. So hat's part of the totality of circumstances that a police officer is responsible for knowing, which they had constant communication with our radios. We know what's going on. That officer that pulled that trigger which shot an American woman who was clearly in a physically compromised position. Climbing through the
broken glass of a window is not, you know, it's not like she just stepped into the cage at MMA and she was ready to fight. She was climbing through a window draped in a flag. This police officer is on the other side of the window. There's police officers on the interior side of the window. So yeah, plenty enough officer presence if you want to arrest that woman. And by all means, pull her through the window, you know, put flex
cuffs on her and throw in a corner. We'll get to you later, ma'am. We're kind of busy right now. But that's what you do. You grab that woman and pull her through, flex cuff her and throw her in a corner. Hand her back to somebody that could pull her back, you know, from that front line right there. So I understand that very well. I understand officers have to make split second decisions. But you never make a decision to use lethal force unless it's absolutely called for and required. If you're losing a fight,
attempting to effect an arrest then yeah, if the officer's life is in danger and is all by himself, but there never should be a circumstance where you just pull the trigger on a woman climbing through a window who is clearly unarmed. There's no evidence of gunplay from the crowd that she's coming from. You got officers on both side of where she is. If you got to arrest her, then by all means, arrest her. You know, put flex cuffs on her and and move on so you can handle the next person trying to come through the window. But you don't shoot her.

Tucker [00:33:03] But if you do, there's a real investigation.

Rep Clay Higgins [00:33:06] It was cheered.

Tucker [00:33:06] Yeah. Why do you think that was?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:33:11] There's this insanity that has taken hold in the minds and hearts of many otherwise reasonable American citizens, where they Trump so much they're so deeply embedded and they've sold their souls to the establishment that when we had an America First president and he stopped the military industrial complex forward momentum and and he began restoring power to individual members of Congress and restoring individual rights and freedoms and sovereignty of the state. And he took away the actions of the cartels and brought this real common sense approach to the executive branch and was leading our country in that beautiful direction. This was interfering with the business model of the establishment. So many career politicians on both sides of the aisle. And I don't like those guys. I'm not one of them. I serve my country and Congress, but I don't consider myself a politician by any means. I'm a servant to We the people. Some of these guys, they pop out of the womb to be politicians. They get groomed their whole life, you know, to be a a career politician. And those are the ones that had this instinctive cheer for something really bad happening to a Trump supporter. Their true colors showed in that moment and it was an ugly color.

Tucker [00:35:00] Yeah. We shouldn't be shooting women, number one. I couldn't agree more. So where where does this go from here? You have this corpus of information that sounds like it's definitive. When does the public see the detail? And what's the process after that?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:35:15] It's a good question. So evidence from criminal investigations by nature is rather secretive, but there is a tremendous compilation of data that I think should be made completely available to the public. And that's the digital files from from J4, 5 and 6. This is where Speaker Mike Johnson can be a champion that will be remembered for throughout history as the Speaker of the House that fully released unredacted digital files from J4, 5 and 6 completely to the American people.
And within that data is full truth. And the American people is the only staff large enough to, you know, frame by frame, go through 80,000 hours of digital evidence. Nobody has a staff big enough to do that, but we can crowdsource it to the American people. So you ask, when will this evidence be released? I've been encouraging Speaker Johnson, as I did speaker McCarthy to by God, man, release this data to the American people.

Tucker [00:36:47] Why won’t they?

Rep Clay Higgins [00:36:48] I believe Speaker Johnson will. Mike is quite a skilled constitutionalist attorney himself. And he's a very measured, patient, faithful man. So I extend trust to Speaker Johnson when he says that it's his intention to fully release the J6 tapes. But really it's digital evidence. It's more than just video evidence. It's a lot. You know, radio transcripts, the whole thing. I believe Speaker Johnson knows that this is a significant duty that he must perform for the American people. It's a moment in history where you know, I believe our Lord and Savior has placed him in that position of service to the country. And he has a responsibility to fully release that data. And then the American people will see for themselves what some of us have already learned, to our horror, to be true.

Tucker [00:38:10] Congressman Higgins, thank you very much.