Clay Higgins: Here's Why I Voted No on Epstein Files

The Epstein Files Transparency Act was approved by the House and Senate on Tuesday with only one member of Congress in opposition. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, was the sole "Nay" in the House's 427-1 vote. He said he opposed the bill to release the Justice Department's files on Jeffrey Epstein on privacy grounds, Politico reports. In a post on X, Higgins said he had been a "principled 'NO' from the beginning."

• "What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America," Higgins wrote. "As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote."

The AP describes Higgins as a "fervent Trump supporter and a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus." He chairs the subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee that first subpoenaed the DOJ for files on its Epstein investigation. During the months they spent trying to block the bill, Republican leaders pointed to the committee's work as evidence it wasn't needed. The initial subpoena Higgins issued focused only on Bill and Hillary Clinton, the New York Times notes. In his post on X, Higgins said the committee is "conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case."

"If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House," Higgins wrote, but the Senate later agreed by unanimous consent to send the bill to President Trump's desk without amendments. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voted for the legislation, also raised concerns about victims' privacy. The legislation, however, says that the attorney general can withhold or redact any information that identifies victims, NBC News reports.