New Mexico’s former Attorney General is calling out the Justice Department for systematically undermining the state’s long-running effort to probe Jeffrey Epstein’s isolated Zorro Ranch, revealing a pattern of interference that began in 2019 and continues to this day.
Hector Balderas says federal prosecutors struck an informal deal, took the state’s evidence, then ghosted New Mexico while the elite predator’s desert compound remained largely untouched.
In an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation, Balderas detailed how the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York persuaded his office to halt interviews of witnesses and persons of interest in exchange for a promise to return any state-related materials once the federal case wrapped. That promise, he says, was never kept.
New Mexico’s former attorney general is taking the Justice Department to task for slowing down his state’s renewed probe into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that the federal government “burned” his office in its investigation of the… pic.twitter.com/S2l933Xdz9
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 21, 2026
A newly surfaced handwritten note from July 23, 2019, captures the arrangement: “Agreed NMDOJ will stop interviews + refer all matters to SDNY. SDNY will refer any state-related matters to NMAG @ [the] conclusion of SDNY case.”
An email from then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey days later confirmed the conversation, stating New Mexico had agreed to “cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered to date” while the federal side pledged to pass along state crime information later.
Comey noted her office had not communicated with New Mexico again after that July talk.
Balderas delivered the state’s evidence—police reports, recorded interviews, and more—then waited.
Epstein died in custody. The federal case against him ended. Yet the materials never came back.
“I mean, we almost would have got that guy, but he hung 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,” Balderas revealed.
He later sent letters in 2020 urging federal authorities to seize the ranch for evidence preservation, including potential files and recordings. No response of substance followed.
Even when some of New Mexico’s material was used in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentencing years later, the state still got nothing in return.
The same pattern is playing out now under current Attorney General Raúl Torrez. After the massive Epstein files release earlier this year, Torrez reopened the criminal probe into the 7,500-acre property south of Santa Fe.
He has repeatedly requested the complete, unredacted federal case file—names of survivors, witnesses, co-conspirators, and leads essential to building a New Mexico case.
More than 130 days later, those records remain withheld. Torrez has described the delay as causing “real and escalating harm,” writing that “every day that the USDOJ withholds these records, the foundation upon which a New Mexico prosecution could be built erodes.”
Balderas sees continuity. “They burned me, and now I think they’re burning Raúl,” he said. In a letter to Torrez this week, he framed the current refusal as a clear breach of the original prosecutorial agreement and offered himself as a potential litigation witness if the state chooses to sue on states’ rights grounds.
“If the state can’t get the damn records, I hope the state will sue under some states’ rights theory,” Balderas added. “It’s ratcheting up.”
A DOJ spokesperson responded that federal law, court orders, and privacy protections for victims and witnesses prevent the release of millions of unredacted documents, regardless of any state deadline.
The ranch itself has finally seen action. In March, New Mexico Department of Justice agents, police, and the local sheriff’s office conducted a multi-day search of the property—now owned by Texas real estate figure Don Huffines and renamed San Rafael Ranch—as part of the renewed investigation.
The operation focused on long-circulating claims that the bodies of at least two foreign girls, allegedly strangled during violent encounters, were buried in the surrounding hills on orders from Epstein and Maxwell.
That search followed the February launch of a bipartisan legislative “truth commission” armed with subpoena power and millions in funding.
Lawmakers acted after an email in the Epstein files described a former staffer’s claim that “somewhere in the hills outside Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G.”
State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard called the possibility of state land involvement “horrifying.”
The commission is examining not only the alleged crimes but why local and federal authorities failed for so long to produce an official record of what happened on the sprawling compound, which featured a massive hacienda, guest lodges, private airstrip, and helipad.
The ranch’s darker alleged purposes extend beyond trafficking and violence. Epstein purchased the property in 1993 and, according to multiple accounts given to scientists and others over the years, envisioned it as a base for impregnating women with his DNA to “seed” the human race.
The idea, first detailed publicly in 2019, centered on creating a controlled breeding operation tied to his interest in eugenics and genetic improvement.
Fresh claims in the files and from survivors have revived discussion of medical experimentation, organ harvesting, and forced pregnancies at the isolated site.
NEW: Epstein survivor says girls at Epstein's Zorro Ranch would wake up in a dark room with a female doctor standing over them, feeling as if there had just been a procedure done on them.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 27, 2026
Survivor Chauntae Davies says there was a hunt for the "perfect gene pool."
"There's… pic.twitter.com/5V3fif0gfc
Huffines has granted full access for the search and insists any law enforcement request will be met with cooperation. He plans to convert the property into a Christian retreat, stating the sale proceeds earlier went to Epstein’s victims and that the land can now be reclaimed for good.
Balderas, who left office in 2023, frames the entire saga as a failure of federal partnership that left potential New Mexico crimes unprosecuted.
He notes that his investigators were building probable cause for a ranch search when the stand-down order arrived. The result: no charges in the state, no federal search for years, and evidence trails that may have grown colder.
“It’s totally bizarre,” he said of the silence after the federal case concluded.
The truth commission continues its work alongside the criminal probe. Interim findings were expected around this period, with a final report due later.
Survivors and tipsters have already provided accounts of abuse, experimental procedures, and the ranch’s role as a remote hub shielded by wealth and connections.
Whether the withheld federal files would accelerate justice or simply confirm what state investigators already suspected remains the central unanswered question.
What is clear is that a deal was struck, evidence was handed over, and the reciprocal obligation was never fulfilled.
New Mexico is still trying to finish the job the federal government interrupted. The deep state’s protective instincts around Epstein’s network appear to have outlasted the man himself.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
More news on our radar
