Democrats and Republicans alike anticipated a clear, unanimous vote on Tuesday to drive the discharge of Jeffrey Epstein’s case recordsdata. However one member didn’t be a part of the consensus: Republican Consultant Clay Higgins of Louisiana.
His lone dissent highlighted his historical past of staking out positions on the acute fringe of the Republican Occasion.
The US Home accepted the measure by an amazing margin of 427, together with 216 Republicans. The invoice then moved to the Senate, which unanimously accepted it, clearing the way in which for it to be despatched for President Donald Trump’s signature.
Here’s what we all know:
Who’s Clay Higgins?
Higgins has represented Louisiana’s third Congressional District since 2017. He is called one of the crucial far-right members of the Home and sometimes takes positions that fall outdoors the Republican mainstream. He’s additionally a powerful Trump supporter.
Higgins has drawn nationwide consideration for years, usually due to controversy. Earlier than he entered Congress, he labored in legislation enforcement, the place he confronted a number of misconduct complaints. He later grew to become well-known on-line for his dramatic, tough-talking Crime Stoppers movies, which went viral and helped launch his political profession.
His outspoken type has continued in Washington. In 2020, he posted a message on Fb threatening using drive towards armed protesters, alongside a photograph of Black demonstrators carrying lengthy weapons. “If we recognise risk … you received’t stroll away,” he wrote. Fb later eliminated the publish.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, Higgins was overtly sceptical in regards to the virus and claimed that the Chinese language Communist Occasion had created and weaponised it.
In 2021, Higgins claimed that “ghost buses” – unmarked automobiles he stated carried undercover brokers or provocateurs – had been despatched to the US Capitol on January 6 to spark the violence. January 6 was the day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to cease certification of the 2020 election. No proof has ever supported the Higgins declare.
Higgins once more drew backlash in 2024 after he made offensive feedback about Haitian immigrants, echoing remarks Trump had made in regards to the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, together with the president’s unsubstantiated declare that Haitian immigrants had been consuming pets.
Higgins known as Haiti “the nastiest nation within the Western Hemisphere”. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus confronted him, after which he deleted a publish on Haitians consuming pets and stated he was referring to gang members, not all Haitians.
Even earlier than coming into Congress, Higgins was acquainted with public criticism. He resigned from the St Landry Parish Sheriff’s Workplace in 2016 after going through backlash over one among his hardline anticrime movies.
Higgins is the seventh of eight kids. He was born in New Orleans, and his household moved to Covington, Louisiana, when he was six.
In 2017, he said he was working 16- to 18-hour days and that he typically slept on an air mattress in his Washington, DC, workplace.
Higgins has been married 4 instances. He at present lives in Port Barre, Louisiana, along with his fourth spouse, Becca.
Why did Higgins oppose?
Higgins had beforehand voiced his help for the investigation by the committee and was a lead investigator.
However in a post on X, Higgins defined his causes for opposing the measure, saying the recordsdata may inadvertently entangle harmless folks if they’re launched, and claimed that he had been opposed to creating the paperwork public from the beginning.
“I’ve been a principled ‘NO’ on this invoice from the start. What was improper with the invoice three months in the past continues to be improper in the present day. It abandons 250 years of felony justice process in America. As written, this invoice reveals and injures hundreds of harmless folks – witnesses, individuals who supplied alibis, relations, and many others,” Higgins wrote. “If enacted in its present type, such a broad reveal of felony investigative recordsdata, launched to a rabid media, will completely lead to harmless folks being harm. Not by my vote.”
His worries had been much like these voiced by Home Speaker Mike Johnson and different lawmakers. Supporters of the invoice pushed again, saying these fears had been unfounded and that safeguards had been already included to stop any delicate particulars from being launched.
“The Oversight Committee is conducting an intensive investigation that has already launched properly over 60,000 pages of paperwork from the Epstein case. That effort will proceed in a fashion that gives all due protections for harmless People. If the Senate amends the invoice to correctly handle [the] privateness of victims and different People, who’re named however not criminally implicated, then I’ll vote for that invoice when it comes again to the Home,” he added.
In actuality, nonetheless, the invoice to launch the recordsdata contains redactions of parts that might in any other case reveal the identities of witnesses, victims, their households and whistleblowers.
After the vote, Higgins appeared to lift his cellphone and take a photograph of the Home voting board itemizing his dissenting vote simply earlier than votes closed.
I’ve been a principled “NO” on this invoice from the start. What was improper with the invoice three months in the past continues to be improper in the present day. It abandons 250 years of felony justice process in America. As written, this invoice reveals and injures hundreds of harmless folks – witnesses,…
— Rep. Clay Higgins (@RepClayHiggins) November 18, 2025
