The Justice Department's refusal to turn over Epstein-related records to New Mexico prosecutors breaks sharply from how state and federal investigators normally cooperate, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance argued in an analysis published Monday.
Vance was writing about a lawsuit New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed last week against the DOJ and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, seeking unredacted files the state says it needs to investigate alleged crimes at Jeffrey Epstein's former Zorro Ranch near Santa Fe. The complaint alleges that in 2019, federal prosecutors asked New Mexico to pause its own investigation and promised to share information once their work concluded, then never did.
Vance, a former federal prosecutor, wrote that deferring to federal authorities and later sharing information is standard practice. Withholding it is not.
"Withholding information, which DOJ has done here, is exceptional," she wrote. Torrez has said the files could help investigators identify witnesses, corroborate evidence and determine the full scope of crimes in the state.
She also pointed to reporting in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's book "Regime Change" that senior Trump officials, including Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Blanche and Kash Patel, held damage-control meetings in the White House Situation Room over fallout from the Epstein files. Concern, she suggested, reached beyond the president.
The department has said court protective orders do not permit disclosure of victim-identifying information and that protecting victim privacy remains a priority. Torrez, who says the DOJ has never cooperated with his office, counters that sharing files with fellow prosecutors is not public disclosure.
Joyce Vance said the unanswered questions won't fade.
"New Mexico says DOJ promised to share Epstein evidence when the fed'l investigation ended," Vance wrote. "Instead, the state says DOJ withheld it—making it harder to investigate what happened at Zorro Ranch."
"That's not how this normally works," she added. "So why is it happening?"