The House voted on an overwhelming bipartisan basis to compel the release of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files — and in the end, even most heavily pro-Trump lawmakers backed the bill, as President Donald Trump, who spent months trying to keep a lid on this legislation and quell a GOP revolt against him, relented and proclaimed Republicans should vote for it and he would sign it.
But one GOP lawmaker voted against the bill: Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA).
Higgins, a former law enforcement officer, got immediately skewered by commenters on the internet for trying to shield information about one of America's most notorious child predators. But he remains unapologetic about his vote, and posted a lengthy explanation for it to X on Tuesday afternoon.
In summary, he argued, while the bill does include provisions to censor the names of victims and pictures of child sexual abuse material, he believes those privacy protections don't go far enough and there are many other classes of innocent people who will be harmed by the release.
"I have been a principled 'NO' on this bill from the beginning," wrote Higgins. "What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. 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."
This, he emphasized, doesn't mean he's against there being a public investigation of the Epstein case.
"The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case," Higgins continued. "That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. 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."