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The US House has voted overwhelmingly to release all files related to disgraced financier and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – with 427 votes.
The lone ‘no’ vote came from Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican and fierce ally of President Donald Trump.
The Senate will pass the House bill to force the Department of Justice to release the files after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed for unanimous consent.
In the Senate, it will pass automatically and then be brought to President Donald Trump’s desk. Trump has promised to sign the bill.
Even as the bill moves forward through the legislature, attention has been drawn away from what’s next with the files and placed on Higgins.
Why did Higgins vote against releasing the Epstein files?
After his vote, Higgins took to X in an attempt to explain why he voted against 427 of his peers.
He wrote on X: ‘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.’
He did clarify: ‘If the Senate amends the bill to properly address the 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.’
Who is Clay Higgins?
Higgins is a U.S. representative from Louisiana and is currently serving in his fifth term.
He’s also a big supporter of Trump and a member of the super-conservative ‘House Freedom Caucus’, which pledges allegiance to the MAGA movement and is staunchly right-wing.
Before entering office, however, Higgins was also facing controversy as a former police officer.
He faced allegations of misconduct and was nicknamed ‘Cajun John Wayne’ after challenging people on social media to fights.
After taking office, Higgins was almost removed from office after racist comments were made about Haitian immigrants.
After Donald Trump made the outrageous claim that the immigrants were ‘eating cats and dogs’ in Springfield, Ohio, Higgins backed him up.
On social media, Higgins wrote: ‘Eating pets, voodoo, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters.’
He later deleted the post and said the comment was intended to be against gang members.
What to know about the Epstein files
The potentially historic release comes after the House Oversight Committee released thousands of pages of emails and other documents from Epstein’s estate, showing his connections to global leaders, political figures and Trump.
Journalists and tech CEOs were also included in some of the released documents. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal and Palantir, was invited by Epstein to visit his island in 2018.
A representative for Thiel told Politico that he had never visited the island.
As for the President, Trump has said he cut ties with Epstein years ago, but tried for months to move past the demands for disclosure.
On Monday, he told reporters that Epstein was connected to more Democrats and that he didn’t want the Epstein files to ‘detract from the great success of the Republican Party.’
Still, many in the Republican base have continued to demand the release of the files. The files about Epstein will likely be made into a ‘searchable and downloadable’ format within 30 days, then released to the public.
Many of those court documents – including flight logs for Epstein’s private jet – have already been made public, but many more remain sealed, raising speculation over who else could be implicated.
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