Representative Clay Higgins, the Louisiana Republican who was the sole “no” vote in Congress on Wednesday against a bill to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, has long stood out as a hard-right conspiracy theorist even in a Republican conference that trends that way.
In the past, Mr. Higgins, an ardent supporter of President Trump, has claimed that “ghost buses” took agents provocateurs to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to instigate the riot. He has made fantastical claims, promoting a theory that 200 F.B.I. informants were “embedded in the crowd” and “inside the Capitol dressed as Trump supporters.”
He has also in the past promoted a right-wing antigovernment militia, the Three Percenters, and he has called the criminal charges against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents a “perimeter probe from the oppressors.” It should come as little surprise, then, that he was also a vocal proponent of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
When it comes to the Epstein case, Mr. Higgins has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Trump-sanctioned House investigation that has been run by the Oversight Committee, of which he is a senior member. Republicans who opposed the legislation approved on Wednesday often pointed to the work of the committee as evidence that was not needed. And they used it as a way to claim they were pushing for transparency on an issue that is critical to their voters, and protect themselves from charges that they were trying to stand in the way of a full release of the Epstein files.
Mr. Higgins serves as chairman of the panel’s subcommittee on federal law enforcement, and has touted his role issuing the first Epstein-related subpoena to the Justice Department.
That action focused on Democrats. He directed the Justice Department to deliver documents related to former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On the House floor on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson said ahead of the vote that he anticipated that every Republican would vote in favor of the measure, even though he said he still had major concerns with it.
“None of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” Mr. Johnson said, explaining why he would vote for a bill that he had worked for months to prevent from coming to the floor.
Mr. Higgins, however, was not afraid of going on the record in that way. He waited to cast his vote until most of his colleagues had already cast theirs. And he looked resolute as he broke ranks with his colleagues.
“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” he wrote online later, explaining his vote. “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.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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