New Mexicoâs former attorney general is taking the Justice Department to task for slowing down his stateâs renewed probe into Jeffrey Epsteinâs Zorro Ranch, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that the federal government âburnedâ his office in its investigation of the property.
The Department of Justice may have impeded New Mexicoâs investigation into sex trafficking of girls and women on Jeffrey Epsteinâs ranch in New Mexico, the former attorney general of New Mexico said in an exclusive interview with the DCNF.
Federal investigators made an informal deal with the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) to provide evidence for New Mexicoâs investigation into Epsteinâs Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas told the DCNF. The U.S. attorneyâs office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) failed to follow through on its informal agreement made on July 23, 2019, with the NMDOJ to refer any state-related matters of the Epstein investigation back to the NMDOJ, Balderas told the DCNF.
Balderas, who left office as New Mexico attorney general on Jan. 1, 2023, corroborated his statement by citing a newly discovered handwritten note and an email from James Comeyâs daughter released with other Epstein files earlier this year.
Balderas sent a letteron Monday to the current New Mexico Attorney General calling out the âSDNY, and by proxy the U.S. DOJâ for their role in what he alleged was a direct impediment to his officeâs investigation of Jeffrey Epsteinâs Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.
It remains unclear exactly who wrote the July 2019 note, but Balderas believes it came from either a staff member or legal assistant in the New York office.
âAgreed NMDOJ will stop interviews + refer all matters to SDNY. SDNY will refer any state-related matters to NMAG @ conclusion of SDNY case,â the handwritten note says.
An email in the Epstein files from Sept. 8, 2019, also appears to corroborate the handwritten note that Balderas just discovered. The email was sent by Maurene Comey, who was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2019, to an undisclosed address.
âWe spoke with the New Mexico AGâs office back in July 2019. In essence, they agreed to cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered to date regarding sex trafficking activity with our office,â Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, wrote in the September email. âWe have not communicated with anyone from the New Mexico AGâs office since that conversation in July 2019.â
The deal between New Mexico, New York and the DOJ was initially made public when a 2019 letter was published in the Epstein files. The letter was from Balderas to Comey and included attachments with all of the NMDOJâs evidence and interviews.
Zorro Ranch first entered the national spotlight in a 2003 Vanity Fair profile that described Epsteinâs sprawling New Mexico estate and private aircraft, but the Ranch became a focus of the sex-trafficking scandal after his 2019 arrest. Epstein was never charged with a crime in New Mexico, and the first publicly documented law enforcement search of the property occurred on March 9, 2026, The Associated Press reported.
Balderasâs letter came after Torrez accused the Justice Department of stonewalling New Mexicoâs active Zorro Ranch investigation by withholding unredacted Epstein records. Balderas said the present dispute reflects the same pattern he encountered in 2019, when SDNY allegedly persuaded his office to halt interviews in exchange for a promise to return state-related evidence after the federal case concluded.
âThe SDNY, and by proxy the U.S. DOJ, entered into an agreement with the Attorney General of New Mexico that they would provide the records, materials, and leads necessary to investigate New Mexico crimes,â Balderasâ letter from Monday says. âCertainly, the SDNY case has concluded, such that their obligation under this agreement has now materialized. I view this complete refusal to provide the materials your investigators need as a clear breach of our prosecutorial agreement.â
âI mean, we almost would have got that guy, but hehung himself, and then it got a little more complicated, and the DOJ still promised us info to let us finish our job at the state level,â Balderas told the DCNF. âMy angle today in contemporary time is not only to continue to tell the story of what happened when they interfered, but Iâm also going to draw attention to the current AG whoâs getting jammed, and the Truth Commission ⊠What Iâm doing is drawing their attention to the fact that there was evidence that we had an agreement, and they burned me, and now I think theyâre burning RaĂșl.â
The DOJ told the DCNF that it cannot release those records due to legal constraints.
âFederal law, court orders, and privacy protections for victims and witnesses do not allow us to release millions of unredacted documents, regardless of any deadline set by NMDOJ,â a DOJ spokesperson told the DCNF. âWe will continue to follow federal law and the court orders that are in place.â
âIf the state canât get the damn records, I hope the state will sue under some statesâ rights theory,â Balderas told the DCNF. âWhat Iâm trying to do is tell the current AG and the Truth Commission, I might be your best litigation witness ⊠itâs ratcheting up.â
Federal investigators requested that Balderas halt interviews of witnesses, suspects and persons of interest, which the New Mexico investigators were using to build probable cause for a search of Epsteinâs ranch, Balderas told the DCNF.
âNotwithstanding this, the agreement with the SDNY prosecutors was not to simply stop or to stay out of their way,â Balderasâ letter says. âInstead, my administration had a firm agreement with the SDNY that they have not honored to this day.â
âWe Believe This Ranch Was Used By Epsteinâ
The agreement between the federal New York office and the New Mexico state office called for New York to refer all state-related matters of the investigation back to the New Mexico office after the conclusion of the Epstein case in the Southern District of New York; however, Balderas said SDNY staff never contacted the New Mexico state office after its case concluded.
âItâs totally bizarre,â Balderas told the DCNF. âI sent a letter in 2020 saying, âHey guys, I donât know. You clearly ghosted me for a year, but arenât you going to seize the ranch in forfeiture?â ⊠then even in 2022, they used some of our evidence in sentencing against Ghislaine , and they still hadnât gotten back to us with any exchange of information and the updates ⊠Itâs very uncommon. And we had a history, by the way, of cooperating, working well with federal authorities in 2019.â
Balderas also called for federal authorities to seize the property in the letter.
âOur office has provided investigative evidence regarding Jeffrey Epsteinâs use of the Zorro Ranch, located in Stanley, New Mexico, to assist federal prosecutors,â Balderasâ letter, presumably to the former United States Attorney Audrey Strauss from July 8, 2020 states. âWe believe that this ranch was used by Epstein and others to facilitate the commission and prolonged concealment of his trafficking of children, such that seizure may be pursued in conjunction with the pending criminal prosecution of Epsteinâs associates and co-conspirators.â
Balderas even said his office was kept in the dark about allegations that bodies were buried at the ranch, with the claims first emerging in an infamous email from the Epstein files.
âDid you know somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G? Both died by strangulation during rough, fetish sex,â an unverified anonymous 2019 email in the Epstein files states.
The email was sent from an encrypted account belonging to an individual who claims to be a former staff member at the Zorro Ranch, Source New Mexico reported on Feb. 10. The anonymous source wanted to be paid for the information in bitcoin, according to the email.
While the anonymous tip is unverified, Balderas said his office never heard about the tip and therefore never investigated it.
âWhatâs recently come to light as ⊠half the files have been made public. Iâve gone through them and learned through the FBI that they did not share those tips with us,â Balderas told the DCNF. âThatâs something that they could have called us back and said, âHey, we donât have probable cause, but anything related to bodies is state jurisdictionâ ⊠I use that as an example that yes, they didnât keep their end of the deal. Plus, they didnât share critical information, like tips that went to them that they should have normally .â
Balderas said he believes the DOJ ignored his team of investigators on purpose.
âI donât think it was an accident that they didnât get back to us,â Balderas told the DCNF. âI guess thatâs a different way to say that ⊠I think them ghosting us was intentional and different conduct than normal federal-state behavior.â
The DOJ may even be going directly against the agreement that was reached between the NMDOJ and the federal DOJ, Balderas said.
âDOJ is going back even on their deal, which is even kind of shadier than just hey, weâre going to jam you and then leave,â Balderas said. âThey misrepresented that they were going to be a cooperating agency to a state prosecution, which, to your question, is like why?â
â already had a felony theory on Epstein on July 2 ⊠and then July 6 they indicted Epstein. So this was really a barn-burner,â Balderas told the DCNF. âLike we were an elite prosecution unit, so for the Truth Commission to be like, âHey, AG, did you do enough?â What do you mean? We were pressuring the DOJ? They were pissed because we had Epstein on our side. Now in retrospect, some might argue that maybe ⊠the feds should have been deferring to us because they didnât get a warrant later on for the search. In other words, they just took the quick win and bamboozled the public ⊠This is kind of a bombshell find, because itâs basically really adding insight that New Mexico had an elite prosecution unit.â
New Mexico state representatives are currently in the process of investigating Epsteinâs Zorro Ranch through their Truth Commission, which has an interim report due on July 31 and a final report due on December 31, according to New Mexico House Resolution 1.
Although the Truth Commission is now working to investigate Epsteinâs Zorro Ranch, Balderas is concerned that critical evidence may have been removed or destroyed in the elapsed time between the initial NMDOJ investigation.
âThe house of representatives is concerned that the failure to investigate the alleged criminal activity at Zorro ranch and the risk of potential consequences of that activity continue to affect the safety and welfare of the state and that continued legislative inaction threatens public confidence in state government,â according to New Mexico House Resolution 1, otherwise known as the Truth Commission.
The bipartisan resolution, sponsored by Democratic state Reps. Andrea Romero and Marianna Anaya and Republican state Reps. Andrea Reeb and William A. âBillâ Hall, passed the New Mexico House unanimously.
âAt the direction of Attorney General Torrez, the New Mexico Department of Justice initiated a search this morning of the Zorro Ranch property previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein, with the New Mexico State Police and Sandoval County Fire and Rescue K-9 team providing assistance,â the New Mexico Department of Justice said in a statement on March 9.
Balderas said that it is concerning that this amount of time was allowed to pass between the initial investigation and the eventual search of the property, which could have led to the destruction or removal of evidence.
âThey asked us to pause interviewing , which then does pause building probable cause to enter the ,â Balderas told the DCNF. âWe would have searched to then corroborate victim testimony, but because they asked us to pause, we thought it was in the victimâs interest to pause and let them complete their federal prosecution.â
âThey should have told us that they were concluding. They never did after Ghislaine, and they just ghosted us,â Balderas told the DCNF. âThere was an agreement there ⊠they were gonna get them first. So then what happens after that? Then youâre able to evaluate all the bad faith once you know that war room game plan on both sides. Now theyâre just saying no comment.â
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