New Mexico has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the US Division of Justice and its chief, performing Legal professional Common Todd Blanche, accusing the nation’s high regulation enforcement company of “stonewalling” the state’s investigation into the convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In Wednesday’s courtroom submitting, New Mexico’s Legal professional Common Raul Torrez as soon as once more accused the Division of Justice of unlawfully withholding unredacted supplies.
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These supplies, he argued, are crucial to the state’s investigations into Epstein’s actions on the Zorro Ranch, a sprawling property the late financier as soon as owned in New Mexico.
“We requested the Division of Justice to cooperate by offering entry to data that could be crucial to figuring out victims, witnesses, and extra legal conduct at Zorro Ranch,” Torrez mentioned in a press launch.
“Their delay is actively hurting our legal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve.”
Escalating tensions
The lawsuit escalates a feud between Torrez, a Democrat, and the Republican administration of US President Donald Trump. Their spat has been constructing for months.
In early July, Torrez released a letter he despatched to the Justice Division the earlier month, expressing frustration that, regardless of “verbal assurances of cooperation”, the federal authorities had failed to supply entry to the related paperwork.
The Division of Justice, in the meantime, has argued that privateness regulation prevents it from offering state officers with unredacted paperwork from its Epstein file.
“To capitulate to their calls for could be to interrupt federal regulation. Is that what the [New Mexico Attorney General] is suggesting?” the division mentioned in a press release final month.
Questions on Epstein’s actions on the Zorro Ranch stretch again years. He owned the ranch from 1993 till his demise in 2019. Throughout that point, the rich financier was accused of orchestrating a sex-trafficking ring whose victims are thought to quantity within the tons of.
Survivors just like the late Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in 2025, have warned that crimes occurred on the Zorro Ranch.
A conservative discuss present host additionally approached the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after he mentioned he obtained an nameless tip about sexual abuse on the positioning, in addition to “the placement of two overseas ladies buried on Zorro Ranch”. That tip has but to be corroborated.
Investigation paused
New Mexico had first opened an investigation into the ranch in February 2019.
However by July of that 12 months, the Division of Justice had requested New Mexico to face down and switch any info it gathered to federal authorities.
On the time, the Justice Division was pursuing its personal investigation into Epstein, and it arrested him on costs of trafficking minors for intercourse and interesting in a conspiracy to commit such intercourse trafficking.
Later that month, whereas awaiting trial in a New York Metropolis jail cell, Epstein was discovered lifeless, in an incident that was dominated a suicide.
From then on, Torrez mentioned the investigation into Zorro Ranch languished. The huge property was bought in August 2023, and it’s presently owned by businessman Don Huffines, a former member of the Texas Senate.
“Federal regulation enforcement didn’t ever search Zorro Ranch,” Wednesday’s lawsuit reads.
“[The Department of Justice] likewise didn’t make any try and seize Zorro Ranch and Epstein’s related New Mexico property and didn’t do the rest to protect or collect proof of Epstein’s crimes in New Mexico.”
The Epstein case, nevertheless, surged again into the general public highlight in 2025, after Donald Trump was re-elected as US president.
His second administration contained a number of outstanding members who had unfold conspiracy theories in regards to the Epstein case, together with that there was a secret, unreleased “shopper listing” used to blackmail highly effective figures.
Regardless of former Legal professional Common Pam Bondi initially telling Fox Information she had the listing on her desk, each she and FBI Director Kash Patel later denied any such doc existed.
Trump’s personal ties with Epstein helped gas renewed curiosity within the case. The 2 socialised collectively within the Nineties and early 2000s, earlier than severing ties. Trump has mentioned their falling-out needed to do with Epstein poaching staff from the Mar-a-Lago spa, and he has denied any data of Epstein’s crimes.
Paperwork launched
Nonetheless, critics have questioned how Epstein may have prevented justice for therefore lengthy. His one conviction got here in 2008 for the solicitation of a minor — and he served solely 13 months of an 18-month sentence, in what some have described as a very lenient plea deal.
That scrutiny ignited a bipartisan push final November to go the Epstein Information Transparency Act, which required the Division of Justice to launch its Epstein-related recordsdata in a searchable format inside 30 days.
The regulation required restricted redactions, save for the safety of victims’ identities.
The Justice Division in the end launched thousands and thousands of Epstein-related recordsdata in January, however a number of members of Congress have accused the division of failing to adjust to the regulation in its entirety.
Some paperwork, they are saying, had been redacted with out trigger, whereas different paperwork revealed the identities of survivors.
In February, New Mexico reopened its investigation into Zorro Ranch. It mentioned the newly launched Epstein recordsdata included greater than 13,000 references to the property and roughly 5,000 references to the state as a location “the place victims had been trafficked, groomed, and assaulted”.
Regardless of that proof, Torrez mentioned the Division of Justice didn’t comply with via with its “specific assurances” to assist with the state’s Epstein investigation.
In Wednesday’s lawsuit, his authorized workforce argued that additional delay in accessing the unredacted recordsdata may pervert the pursuit of justice.
“Legal professional Common Torrez has marched via each bureaucratic hoop [Department of Justice] has demanded, solely to have years of promised federal cooperation become bureaucratic defiance,” the lawsuit mentioned.
“Federal inaction doesn’t merely stall the investigation; it prolongs and compounds the struggling of survivors.”
The lawsuit has been filed with the US District Court docket in Washington, DC.
