Andy Biggs Controversy Epstein Files Arizona

The Republican Who Wrote the Bill Says Andy Biggs Killed It: 'Women and Children Suffered Three Years Longer Because He Protected the Bad Guys'

In 2013, a bill to strip police powers from a marshal's office accused of serving a polygamist sect passed Arizona's House and died in Biggs's Senate. The Justice Department later won its case against that same police force.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 15, 2026

The Republican Who Wrote the Bill Says Andy Biggs Killed It: 'Women and Children Suffered Three Years Longer Because He Protected the Bad Guys'

Andy Biggs is the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona. Before that he was president of the Arizona Senate. And in 2013, according to the Republican who wrote the bill, he is the reason a police force accused of protecting child abusers kept its badges for three more years.

What the bill would have done

Colorado City, Arizona sits on the Utah line and is the historic seat of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the sect that broke from the Mormon Church over polygamy. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of sexually assaulting two underage girls he had forced into marriage.

Colorado City shares a police department, the Marshal's Office, with Hildale, Utah across the border. For years the accusation against that department was not that it failed to stop the FLDS. It was that it worked for them.

The U.S. Justice Department eventually sued both towns, alleging the shared marshal's office selectively enforced the law and served FLDS leadership rather than the public — including an effort to return a fleeing child bride to the group.

In 2013, Arizona legislators tried to do something about it. A bill to strip the marshal's office of its authority passed the state House overwhelmingly.

Then it went to the Senate, where Biggs was president. It never got a vote.

The bill's own sponsor says he buried it

Michelle Ugenti-Rita, then a Republican state lawmaker, wrote that bill. She has been blunt about what happened to it, and about the cost:

"Women and children suffered three years longer than they should have because he protected the bad guys."

Flora Jessop, who escaped the FLDS, told the Washington Post that legislators had "more than enough" to act on.

This is not a Democratic attack line. It's the bill's Republican author, and a survivor of the sect, saying the same thing.

The Post also spoke to a county Republican supervisor who said he cast an early ballot against Biggs over precisely this — he wanted a candidate "who has made a stand for women and children above religion."

Biggs's explanation

Asked about the accusation that he killed the bill, Biggs said officials had been "trying to gather more information." On whether the marshal's office was corrupt, he said: "I'm not sure we ever got to" that conclusion. He questioned whether legislators had enough evidence to justify the state stepping in.

Set that against the timeline. Warren Jeffs had already been convicted. The federal government went on to sue the towns and win.

The evidence Biggs says he wasn't sure about was sufficient for the Department of Justice.

And note what "gather more information" meant in practice. He wasn't required to pass the bill. He could have let it come to the floor and let 30 senators vote. Instead the thing died where nobody had to go on record — which is the specific power a Senate president has, and the specific reason it's hard to pin down afterward.

Except the sponsor pinned it down.

Thirteen years later, the same instinct

In December, Biggs was publicly demanding the Epstein files. He posted that "Americans deserve transparency from the corrupt FBI – starting with Epstein's client list," and asked flatly: "Where is Epstein's client list?"

On July 23, 2025, he got the chance to vote on it. A House subcommittee took up a measure demanding the Justice Department release the files. It passed 8 to 2, with three Republicans joining five Democrats.

Biggs was one of the two no votes.

His chief of staff didn't respond when the Phoenix New Times asked about it.

He is not the only Republican who found the files less urgent once a vote was attached. Clay Higgins was the only member of the entire House to vote against releasing them on the floor, 427 to 1. James Comer, who chairs the committee that could compel them, has handled the whole subject with conspicuous gentleness.

But the pattern is worth naming in Biggs's case specifically, because it's the same shape as 2013: loud in public about accountability, quiet where it counts, and unavailable for comment afterward.

What Arizonans are actually voting on

Biggs is asking Arizona to make him governor. A governor signs or vetoes bills, appoints agency heads, and decides which investigations the state pursues.

The record he brings to that job includes a stretch as the most powerful man in the Arizona Senate, during which a bill to disarm a police force accused of serving child abusers passed the House and quietly expired on his watch — and the Republican who wrote it has spent the years since saying he's the reason.

He's also asking for the job on an abortion record most Arizonans don't share.

Voters can weigh his explanation — that nobody was sure. They should weigh it against the fact that the Justice Department was sure enough to sue, and won.