With a single exception, the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Nov. 18, voted unanimously to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and send it to the Senate. The act requires the Justice Department to make public all “unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials” related to the late convicted sex predator and accused sex trafficker within 30 days of the bill being signed into law. The Senate gave the American public whiplash when, just hours later, it too fired the bill off to the president’s desk by unanimous consent.
Several GOP representatives expressed concern at some of the bill’s language, but it seems the public circus this whole affair has stirred up was too much for those who believe the legislation needed more work.
The final vote in the House was 427-1. It is a historic and unprecedented move. These documents pertain to criminal investigations – something normally outside of its purview. That’s what troubles some Republicans. The lone “nay” vote belonged to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who explained in a post on X:
“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. 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. [emphasis Higgins’]”
A Dangerous Political Exercise
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other GOPers expressed similar concerns about the lack of proper protections for some of Epstein’s victims and for many others whose names appear in the Epstein files and, thus, may be assumed to have been involved in the disgraced financier’s crimes even though they were not.
There’s also the possible chilling effect the passage of this bill could have on future criminal investigations. Speaking to reporters on Nov. 18, Johnson said, "Who's going to want to come forward if they think Congress can take a political exercise and reveal their identities? Who's going to come talk to prosecutors? It's very dangerous. It would deter future whistleblowers and informants."
The Speaker said he would insist to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) that language is inserted into the bill that will ensure the privacy of individuals who, for various reasons, are named in the Epstein files but are not implicated in any wrongdoing. These may include witnesses, victims, family members, whistleblowers, and even law enforcement personnel who may have been working undercover during the Epstein investigation. As Higgins further pointed out in his X post:
“The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans.”
Higgins added that he would vote for the bill when it returned to the House “[i]f the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated.” He will not get the chance, though.
