New Mexico Democratic Attorney General Raúl Torrez has accused the Trump administration’s Justice Department (DOJ) of "causing real and escalating harm” over its continued stonewalling of state officials' investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico property, The New York Times revealed Thursday.
“The U.S.D.O.J.’s continued withholding of unredacted records is causing real and escalating harm,” Torrez wrote in a letter sent last week addressed to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, made public on Thursday.
A New Mexico legislative committee launched its own investigation into Epstein’s New Mexico property last month, which was reportedly central to the disgraced financier’s disturbing plan to “seed the human race with his DNA,” and is also alleged to be the burial site of “two foreign girls," according to an FBI tip released this year by the DOJ.
According to the Times, Torrez has reached out to the DOJ nearly half-a-dozen times over the past five months requesting original documents related to Epstein’s New Mexico property, formerly known as Zorro Ranch and now owned by the family of Don Huffines, a wealthy Texas businessman who was recently appointed as Texas comptroller.
He has yet to receive a single response, the Times reported, potentially crippling New Mexico officials’ investigation.
“Every day that the USDOJ withholds these records, the foundation upon which a New Mexico prosecution could be built erodes,” Torrez’s letter to Blanche reads. “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.”
The DOJ refuted Torrez’s claims, telling CNN that the agency “substantively responded last month to requests from the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office.”
Investigations into Epstein’s New Mexico property were underway in 2019 before being abruptly shut down at the request of the Trump administration’s DOJ.