Basement Biggs Goes Silent on His History of Protecting Pedophiles
8/12/26, 6:00 PM
Andy Biggs is ducking questions about his record of blocking bipartisan legislation to protect girls as young as nine from sexual abuse and forced child marriage. When asked by reporters, Biggs’ campaign deflected and said he “already addressed” this.
However, Biggs still hasn’t explained why he protected the pedophile cult in Colorado City in 2013. In fact, when he was asked about this in 2016, his campaign said: “You're not going to get an on-camera interview with Biggs.”
Biggs’ well-documented pattern of ducking questions has earned him the nickname "Basement Biggs," and even fellow Republicans have called out his record.
David Schweikert criticized Biggs for voting against protecting children from "really, really bad actors," and rival Scott Neely pointed voters to "The Biggs Files" — an "alarming" record of votes protecting sex traffickers and predators — after Biggs skipped the Sun City West forum.
Copper State Victory spokesperson Nicholas Simões Machado said:
“For a decade, Andy Biggs has ducked questions about his indefensible record of protecting a corrupt pedophile cult. Biggs had the chance to protect girls as young as nine from abuse, and he sided with their abusers instead. Even his own party has called him out for his pattern of standing with pedophiles and child sex traffickers, and Arizona voters deserve an explanation.”
Arizona’s Family: Decade old Andy Biggs controversy resurfaces
August 10, 2026
Host 1: A controversy from more than a decade ago is resurfacing in the race for governor. This stems from Congressman Andy Biggs’ time as a leader in our state legislature.
Host 2: Critics accuse Biggs of protecting child sex predators and a corrupt polygamous sect in Colorado City. And now the allegations are making a comeback. Governor Katie Hobbs’ campaign is pushing to make it a central issue before the general election, and our political editor Dennis Welch is here to cover that.
Dennis Welch: Yeah, this goes back a little ways, in fact, it goes back about 13 years back when Andy Biggs was the leader of the Arizona State Senate. Now, at the time, some of his own Republicans said he had a chance to stop the abuse of children in Colorado City, but did nothing. So, heading into this campaign, I knew that his long record would play a big part in this race, so, I asked him about this issue back in October last year.
Dennis Welch: Did you bury that bill? And why did you do that? Because it passed the House and it never was brought up for a vote in the Senate.
Andy Biggs: Well, um, you're… I can't remember the procedure, I do remember the bill.
Dennis Welch: That was Andy Biggs late last year. I'd asked him about House Bill 2648, which was written specifically in 2013 to decertify the Colorado City Police Department, and it passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support. At the time, the department was accused of doing the bidding of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Andy Biggs: I do remember that we were still trying to get all the information that we possibly could on whether somebody was corrupt.
Dennis Welch: The bill was introduced 2 years after Jeff's was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years. He was convicted of sexually assaulting underage girls and forcing them into spiritual marriages.
Dennis Welch: Did you ever feel like uh you know you may have been in jeopardy of maybe protecting some of the things that were going on up there and allowing that to continue?
Andy Biggs: Well, we knew that Mr. Jeffs was under investigation; he was going to go away, we knew that other people were also under investigation. No, I wasn't concerned that we were going to actually bury stuff. What I was concerned about was did we have enough as a state to step in.
Dennis Welch: It wasn't the first time he'd been questioned about the legislation. 10 years ago when he first ran for Congress, I spoke with two Republican lawmakers who accused Biggs of killing the bill in the Senate. And he blew me off when I tried to ask him why.
Dennis Welch (reading communications with Biggs campaign): You're not going to get an on-camera interview with Biggs.
Dennis Welch: Now that Biggs is running for governor, he's forced to address questions about the proposed legislation. In addition to saying he wanted more information on possible corruption, Biggs is now saying he also opposed the bill because the Arizona Police Association opposed it.
Dennis Welch: And when asked for comment today, the Biggs campaign sent us a statement that said, in part, "Congressman Biggs has already addressed this poorly written legislation."
Host 2: Yeah, because, ultimately the DOJ did find that there was evidence that law enforcement was acting like an enforcement arm for this FLDS sect, that they even returned child brides that tried to run from these abusive situations to their abusers.
Dennis Welch: You know, 10 years ago when he first ran for Congress and we were trying to ask him questions about this, this was a big issue and the two Republicans who we spoke with were very upset about what happened. They felt like they were trying to really do something to address a very serious situation.
Dennis Welch: That effort was killed because again, in the House, that bill, I went back and reviewed the vote total again, got near 57-2 [votes], overwhelming. And now, put that in context. There's 60 lawmakers in the House. 57 of them said: “let's pass this bill,” went over to the Senate, got assigned to a bunch of different committees, which is a sign that the Senate President, you know, was trying to maybe kill a bill, but that bill never got to the floor.
Host 1: Had the support of the state Attorney General at the time, too, Republican Tom Horne, back in the day.
Dennis Welch: It certainly did, I mean, he was looking at trying to do some of this. It was a big bipartisan issue and lots of questions as to why he acted the way he acted. He's obviously saying now that he was waiting for more information, to see that they had all the information they needed to move on this.
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