Rich Higgins, a former aide who says he was fired from the National Security Council in 2017 for sending a conspiracy note, is currently considered to serve as Brig’s retired chief of staff. General Anthony Tata, the White House candidate for the undersecretary of defense for politics at the Pentagon.
A Pentagon spokesman forwarded CNN’s questions to the White House. A White House spokesman said “he has no comment on the staff.”
When asked for comment, Higgins wrote in an email to CNN: “I will not enter the Department of Defense. No offer has been made,” and in a follow-up email, “I don’t know what the WH is pushing. Ask them. I’m not in the Pentagon on any paper. “
But Higgins confirmed that it was under consideration on a YouTube show published last night.
“It’s still under consideration, it’s true,” said Higgins. He added: “I think it’s the kind of thing that if they get the current nominee, who’s a guy named Tony Tata, to get to the position where I would be a direct report to him, it would probably be worth going into.”
CNN followed up with Higgins after discovering the YouTube show confirming his consideration as Tata’s chief of staff. Higgins did not reply.
Higgins, who served in the Army and later in the Pentagon as a career official in the Bush and Obama administrations, according to his biography, was fired from the NSC in 2017 after writing a memorandum alleging that a gang of “deep-state” officials “and the movements opposed President Donald Trump. He defined the opposition as the media, the Islamists, Black Lives Matter, the ACLU, the United Nations, and cultural Marxists who are leading a coordinated effort to delegitimize and subvert the president.
Since Higgins left the NSC in 2017, he has continued to promote and spread conspiracy theories, according to a CNN KFile review of his media appearances. Higgins said that former Obama administration officials were communists, that the Black Lives Matter movement is “Marxist” and “an agent” of China, and that “left” organizations invented the term Islamophobia just 15 years ago.
The drive to hire Higgins, a conspiracy theorist, and Tata, a frequent and ardent advocate for the president on Fox News, to hold high office in the Pentagon comes as the White House seeks to install loyalists, many of whom have points extremist view, throughout the administration.
The White House nominated Tata to become the third-highest official at the Pentagon in June, but his nomination has come under scrutiny since CNN reported that the retired general pushed conspiracy theories and made anti-Muslim comments on social media, even calling former President Barack Obama “a Muslim” and claiming that former CIA Director John Brennan sent an encrypted tweet ordering Trump’s 2018 assassination.
Like Tata, Higgins mocked Islam in tweets, writing in a derogatory tweet of military generals who said “accept Islam and all its other crackpots [sic]”
In another, he wrote: “Consequences for ignoring the doctrine of threats. Communism and Islam have been blind spots for the national security community for decades,” and that “those of us who warned were called ‘racists.'”
Despite the fact that nearly half a dozen Democratic senators oppose Tata’s nomination, Tata’s nomination is still up for grabs. A congressional source told CNN that Tata is expected to get a nomination hearing before the August recess. The committee also hopes to hold a private executive session on Tata before the hearing.
Spokesmen for the Senate Armed Services Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
Tata’s expected nomination hearing comes amid a report that the administration is considering naming Tata for an acting role to bypass the confirmation process.
A source familiar with Tata’s nomination questioned that account on CNN. “General Tata hopes to discuss all relevant policy issues during his confirmation hearing in the Senate. Avoiding that process is not an option,” the source said.
Support from the Tata White House remains strong, the source added.
A history of conspiracy theories
Higgins is a prolific tweeter for his more than 31,000 Twitter followers, and he frequently shares conspiracy theories or marginal rhetoric on the platform.
One theory that Higgins frequently and repeatedly falsely claimed is that many government officials are communists, specifically saying that many members of the Obama administration and the former president himself were communists. In other tweets, he claimed that leftist organizations or movements were “Marxist.”
In other 2019 tweets, Higgins repeatedly wrote that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was a key witness in Trump’s impeachment investigation, was “a spy and was trying to provoke an OP against POTUS.” There is no evidence that Vindman was a spy.
“We had our first openly communist president in Obama,” Higgins said in a YouTube interview in 2019. “This outspoken communist who identified himself as a community organizer, directly from Saul Alinsky’s book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – the organizer from the communist community. You know, he brings all these open Marxists and some, you know, some more closed Marxists. I mean, Comey has a communist history. Brennan has a communist history. Clapper has a communist history across the board. “
“What if the Communists were in charge of the CIA, the FBI, the DNI, and the WH under Obama?” He tweeted in November 2019.
Higgins has also addressed social justice movements as “communist” movements and encouraged his supporters to boycott the companies, schools, organizations and politicians who support them. On Twitter, he frequently referred to Black Lives Matter as “Marxist revolutionaries” and “Marxists”.
In another tweet, Higgins dismissed the nationwide protests following George Floyd’s death as “non-organic” and claimed that Venezuela, Cuba and “other Marxist state assets” were “operating within these protests.”
After a user requested evidence, Higgins replied, “I have sources on the ground. Does the FBI [sic]? They are not busy chasing white supremacists and staging a coup. ”
“The fact that Congress does not know that BLM is an agent of Communist China does not bode well for the country,” he tweeted in June 2020.
In June, Higgins linked to an article about former Defense Secretary James Mattis, suggesting that Mattis was “compromised” by the Communists in the Obama administration.
“In a police state, many people are compromised and forced to take actions that they normally would not take,” Higgins wrote. “One must ask how many of our leaders were compromised by the communist president, the CIA director and the FBI director. Serious question.”
He also accused prominent officials and institutions of “treason” or “bad expression of treason” on Twitter, including the media, Congress and former officials.
“The inherited media are part of 100% of this coup attempt and Congress, as well as the Justice Department, must take measures and INDICATE them as co-conspirators in this sedition and possible treason,” Higgins wrote in November 2019. .
In other tweets, Higgins said former CIA Director John Brennan was guilty of treason and that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was a “complete fraud and she knows he is guilty of making a treason mistake. “
Comments on Islam
Higgins also made Islamophobic comments and questioned whether Islamophobia was a legitimate concept.
In a video interview, Higgins said that the “left political narrative” invented the concept of Islamophobia 15 years ago to “marry our perception of who” the “enemy” is.
“They put together a concept like Islamophobia, for example. Fifteen years ago, we never heard the term Islamophobia. And we have to ask ourselves, where did that come from? And when you remember it, you realize that Islamophobia is a term invented by the generators of these narratives, “said Higgins.
“The purpose of a term like Islamophobia is to enforce the Islamic law of slander against Westerners, shut down critical thinking and reason that would really allow us to understand why the enemy is fighting, why Omar Mateen was lured to shoot 100 people , 49 whom he passed, at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, “he added, referring to the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter who killed 49 people and injured at least 53 people in 2016.
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