New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is accusing the US Justice Department of withholding entry to unredacted information related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, arguing that the dearth of cooperation is stopping the state from bringing justice to survivors.
“Every day that the USDOJ withholds these records, the foundation upon which a New Mexico prosecution could be built erodes,” Torrez wrote in a scathing letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on June 30 that was publicly launched on Thursday. “Witnesses relocate and become unreachable. Memories, already strained by years of trauma, fade further. Physical and documentary evidence degrades, is lost, or is rendered more difficult to authenticate with the passage of time.”
Torrez’s letter marks the most recent criticism of the US Justice Department’s dealing with of the Epstein case as Congress compelled the division to launch information related to the intercourse trafficker with a bipartisan invoice late final 12 months.
NCS has reached out to the US Justice Department for remark.
New Mexico is investigating allegations of criminal activity surrounding the property Epstein owned close to Santa Fe, often called Zorro Ranch.
The legal probe was reopened in February after the US DOJ’s launch of hundreds of thousands of information related to Epstein, which included a 2019 electronic mail acquired by a neighborhood radio host that alleged that “somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G.” That allegation is unverified, but it surely is additionally not clear to what extent it had been investigated by regulation enforcement earlier than the current renewed curiosity in Epstein.
Some of Epstein’s survivors, together with Chauntae Davies and the late Virginia Giuffre, have mentioned the ranch was one of many locations the place they have been sexually assaulted.
Several lawmakers criticized the heavy redactions within the Epstein information the DOJ started releasing in December 2025, and the US DOJ’s inside watchdog is reviewing the redaction course of.
Some members of Congress have been allowed to view the unredacted paperwork however that they had to “travel to a DOJ annex, sit at one of four DOJ-owned computers, use a clunky and convoluted software system provided by DOJ, and search for and read documents while DOJ staffers look over our shoulders,” in accordance to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the rating member of the House Judiciary Committee.
In final week’s letter, Torrez outlined six makes an attempt from the New Mexico DOJ workplace to attain the federal company, together with a February 13 request for paperwork and an effort final month to arrange an in-person assembly throughout Torrez’s go to to Washington, DC.
“Despite verbal assurances of cooperation from the USDOJ, access to the requested records has not been granted, no substantive response has been provided, and more than 130 days have now elapsed since the (New Mexico Department of Justice’s) initial request,” Torrez wrote. “The NMDOJ views this length of time as an unreasonable delay under any rule of reason.”
As a part of the legal investigation, New Mexico authorities searched Zorro Ranch in March.
Separately, the state has a special legislative panel referred to as “The New Mexico Survivor’s Truth Commission,” which is additionally investigating Zorro Ranch. Last month, the committee subpoenaed a number of banks, a number of US Attorneys workplaces, in addition to the workplaces of Torrez and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for information.