Only one member of Congress voted against releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files on Tuesday, and his reasoning was quite the topic on social media.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) was the one “no” vote amidst 427 “yes” votes on a bill that would force the Justice Department to publicly release its files on the deceased child sex predator.
Considering the overwhelming support given to the bill, people naturally had thoughts why Higgins decided to be the contrarian.
He attempted to explain his reasoning in a long social media post after the passage of The Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Higgins began by saying he’s been “a principled ‘NO’ on this bill from the beginning,” and that “what was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today.”
According to the congressman, the bill “abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” and “reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”
Higgins claimed that “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.”
However, Higgins said that 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.”
Although some people did agree with Higgins’ reasoning for the no vote, the vast majority of people thought he was just trying to protect people in power from being held accountable.
Of course, one person trolled Higgins by wondering if he had an ulterior motive for voting no.