Mother Jones illustration; Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma

In 2015, Clay Higgins started his climb to Congress with a series of videos promising to hunt down lawbreakers. As a spokesman for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana, Higgins generated national attention by making Crime Stoppers public service announcements as straight-to-camera monologues. His menacing promises got him billed as the “Cajun John Wayne” in coverage by CBS News and the Washington Post.

In reality, public information officer Higgins was neither Cajun nor much of a street cop. It did not matter. In 2016, he ran for Congress as a Republican and rode his law-and-order image to Washington. As a congressman, Higgins has kept up the act: He recently made news and drew threats of congressional censure after posting a transparently racist rant about how Haitian immigrants are “thugs.”

Higgins’ carefully cultivated brand centers almost exclusively on law enforcement. His campaign logo features him in his police uniform. He has served as a reserve officer with the Louisiana Department of Justice while in Congress and is known for communicating in cryptic military jargon typical of right-wing militias. Expected to win easily in November, Higgins is believed to harbor ambitions of running for Senate in 2026. If he does, he will almost certainly continue to make his work as a cop central to his message to voters.

But a Mother Jones investigation has revealed a major problem with his pitch: Some of the former Louisiana cops Higgins has associated with have been accused by law enforcement officials of severe wrongdoing—including allegedly participating in a sex trafficking ring in one case and of committing incest in another.

One of the most troubling of these connections, which has not been previously reported, is with an old friend from the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office: Leon Boudreaux. Higgins has been a member of the motorcycle group dubbed the Kindred Vets that Boudreaux founded, and the two are seemingly close. They appear together in numerous photos posted to one of Higgins’ Facebook pages, and they are also pictured together in photos posted by the Kindred Vets in 2022 and 2023.

In 2021, a year prior to Higgins posting a photo with his hand clasped with Boudreaux’s, a New Mexico jury convicted Boudreaux of incest after a teenage relative accused him of sexually assaulting her between the ages of 14 and 18.

Boudreaux confirmed to Mother Jones by phone on Thursday that he is a longtime friend of Higgins and that he rides motorcycles with him. Boudreaux said that Higgins was aware of the charges that had been brought against him. “Back when all that happened, he did call me,” Boudreaux explained. “He called to check on me. But we don’t really talk about that kind of stuff.”

Asked whether he was surprised that the incest case had not impacted their friendship, Boudreaux replied, “Not at all.” He continued, “Clay knows me. Knows I didn’t break any laws. It’s just the way it went.” Boudreaux ended the interview after saying that he did not want to be a part of an article that would “discredit” the congressman. (Higgins’ office did not respond to a detailed request for comment.)........

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