Investigations into alleged crimes that took place at Jeffrey Epstein’s former ranch in New Mexico appear to be ramping up, adding even more pressure to the US Justice Department and its acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, over how they handled matters related to the late child sex offender.
New Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a lawsuit Wednesday over what Torrez described as the DOJ’s “hiding information about Epstein and his co-conspirators” and “stonewalling” the state’s investigation. The suit came on the same day that the state’s so-called “Truth Commission” – led by four members of the state’s House of Representatives – released an interim report vowing to “uncover the truth so many for too long were blind to.”
“New Mexico is one of few jurisdictions that still may have an opportunity to hold Epstein’s associates accountable or otherwise provide some sense of justice to survivors,” Torrez wrote in Wednesday’s lawsuit. He added: “Federal inaction does not merely stall the investigation; it prolongs and compounds the suffering of survivors.”
The Truth Commission’s interim report released on Wednesday said that using the DOJ’s Epstein files to “establish a verifiable and complete chronology of relevant facts is extremely tedious and time-consuming,” and that “all records that the DOJ are withholding subject to the EFTA (Epstein Files Transparency Act) should be released.”
