Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins defends Epstein ‘no’ vote

By Natalie Chandler
The Center Square

LouisianaRepublican Rep. Clay Higgins of Lafayette, the only U.S. House of Representatives lawmaker who voted against releasing documents associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Tuesday, said the legislation will hurt people named in the documents who did nothing wrong.

“It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” Higgins wrote on social media after the vote. “As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”

The bipartisan bill passed 427-1 and received unanimous agreement from the Senate.

President Donald Trump, who had tried to head off the House vote until bowing to pressure from his party, has indicated he will sign the legislation.

Higgins, a Trump loyalist who said last week that he planned to vote against the bill, said the process of releasing the documents had been moving properly through the House Oversight Committee.

“The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case,” he wrote on social media. “That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans.”

Higgins had said if the bill was amended in the Senate to “properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated,” he would vote for it when it returned to the House.

Senate GOP leader John Thune of South Dakota had said changes to the bill were unlikely.