{"id":15803,"date":"2025-11-18T21:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/clay-higgins-explains-why-he-was-the-lone-no-vote-on-epstein-files-release\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T21:16:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:16:46","slug":"clay-higgins-explains-why-he-was-the-lone-no-vote-on-epstein-files-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/clay-higgins-explains-why-he-was-the-lone-no-vote-on-epstein-files-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Clay Higgins explains why he was the lone \u2019no\u2019 vote on Epstein files release"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), the lone “no” vote on the near-unanimous House legislation to force a release of the Justice Department\u2019s files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said on Tuesday that he opposed it on privacy grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,\u201d Higgins wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cAs written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four hundred and twenty-seven House lawmakers<\/a> \u2014 including 216 Republicans \u2014 voted in favor of the legislation on Tuesday, two days after President Donald Trump urged his party to support it on Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House had spent months lobbying against the effort.<\/p>\n

Higgins, a staunch supporter of the president, nevertheless voted against it. But this isn\u2019t his final word on the matter, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Senate could soon clear the bill. Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that the chamber could potentially pass it by unanimous consent as soon as later Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), the lone “no” vote on the near-unanimous House legislation to force a release of the Justice Department\u2019s files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said on Tuesday that he opposed it on privacy grounds. \u201cIt abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,\u201d Higgins wrote on X. \u201cAs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}