(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Brian Higgins, one of the minor players caught in the FBI-driven conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, attempted to kill himself at least six times in jail.
Prosecutors disclosed this disturbing fact Tuesday in a sentencing memorandum, in which they recommended that Higgins receive zero to 11-months imprisonment and undergo mental-health treatment for providing material support for terrorism.
“While pending trial, the prosecution learned from Antrim County Sheriff Daniel Bean that Defendant Higgins had attempted suicide at least six times while he was incarcerated in Antrim County by trying to drown himself in the toilet and by wrapping a towel around his neck to strangle himself,” Michigan prosecutors said in their Nov. 28 filing.
MI AG seeks “0-11 months” in jail for Brian Higgins & “mental health treatment.” He pled guilty in March to Attempted Material Support of Terrorism. AG says his “surveillance furthered the plot to kidnap [Gov.] Whitmer.” Sentencing on Dec. 7 in Antrim Co.https://t.co/rPRdIqAKbB
— Eric L. VanDussen (@Eric_VanDussen) November 29, 2023
Higgins’s “crime” was participating in a “night-time surveillance” car ride to Whitmer’s home on Sept. 12, 2020.
Higgins, for his part, said he didn’t know the car ride was to surveil Whitmer’s home. According to Higgins, his “friend”—Stephen Robeson, who turned out to be an FBI informant—told him that the car ride was to surveil suspected human traffickers.
But facing an uphill legal battle, Higgins pled guilty in March, while his co-defendants who went to trial were all exonerated in September.
By all accounts, Higgins was a broken man by the time he caved in and pled guilty.
Headline USA understands that Higgins was severely abused while in jail. Out of respect for his privacy, the details of that abuse are being withheld.
Suffice it to say, Higgins was a staunch Christian who had never thought of committing suicide before he was sent to jail, said his friend, pro-liberty activist Thomas Leager.
“He’s not the type of guy to have any kind of suicidal ideation, so he must have been suffering some kind of trauma,” Leager told Headline USA.
Leager added that Higgins “seems to be doing better.”
“He’s just very paranoid—and rightfully so,” Leager said, referencing how some of Higgins’s “friends” turned out to be undercover federal agents bent on destroying his life.
Another one of Higgins’s friends, Colleen Kuester, said she thinks much of the abuse took place in a Wisconsin county jail. Kuester said Higgins had undergone an operation on his kidneys shortly before his arrest in 2020, and that he didn’t receive the necessary medical treatment while incarcerated.
Michigan county jail nurses were “appalled” at his condition when he was transferred there, Kuester said.
“He was so skinny,” she said.
Higgins served 217 days in jail and was released after pleading guilty earlier this year.
He’s far from the only man in the Whitmer conspiracy to suffer in the prison system.
As Headline USA previously reported, two of the men convicted in the federal case, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, were transferred to supermax facilities.
Meanwhile, three men convicted on state charges have been transferred to federal facilities outside of Michigan, where they’re unable to communicate with their lawyers or families.
A hearing is set for this Friday for the state to explain to a judge why those inmates were transferred out of state.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
