By Andrew Hay
Aug 5 (Reuters) – New Mexico sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday for access to unredacted files on Jeffrey Epstein, alleging the federal agency was stonewalling the state’s investigation into the late sex offender by refusing to provide the documents.
The lawsuit escalates a politically charged dispute over the U.S. agency’s Epstein files, an issue that has dogged the Trump administration.
The Democratic-run state reopened its Epstein investigation in February and requested unredacted U.S. DOJ files to identify visitors and staff at Zorro Ranch, a property owned by Epstein near Stanley, New Mexico, who allegedly took part in crimes, or witnessed them.
The U.S. Department of Justice has said it provided some files but was prevented from supplying other material due to privacy protections.
“Federal inaction does not merely stall the investigation; it prolongs and compounds the suffering of survivors,” the New Mexico lawsuit argued, requesting that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia compel acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to release the requested files.
In response to the lawsuit, the U.S. DOJ said that under the Epstein Files Transparency Act and protective court orders, it was neither required nor permitted to disclose victim-identifying information.
“New Mexico has provided no lawful basis to justify such sweeping disclosures,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Over five months into the state investigation, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has yet to announce any results.
In a call with reporters, Torrez said the state was devoting a “substantial” amount of resources to the probe, but declined to give further information.
“We haven’t charged someone because we need to see those files before we charge someone,” Torrez said.
Also on Wednesday, New Mexico legislators released an interim report on their so-called Truth Commission probe, an independent investigation into Epstein.
Evidence to date shows Epstein abused at least five women and girls at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2012, the report said. The commission has counted at least 30 other individuals who potentially were abused in New Mexico. Some may be witnesses to abuse, others may be facilitators of abuse, and some may be both, the report said.
Of the first 20 subpoenas issued by the commission to entities ranging from law enforcement departments to a Santa Fe scientific institute, over 100,000 records have been returned, commission Chair Andrea Romero said in a presentation.
Seven subpoenas were refused or ignored, among them a request to the Federal Aviation Administration for Epstein’s flight records and a subpoena to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for evidence New Mexico investigators handed over to them in 2019 that has never been returned, Romero said.
New Mexico authorities claim that the U.S. DOJ reneged on a 2019 deal under which the state agreed to halt its Epstein probe and hand over evidence to the federal agency in return for continued information sharing on alleged survivors and crimes. Torrez has said the state investigation faces considerable obstacles, including the decades that have elapsed since Epstein’s alleged crimes, the disappearance of evidence after the ranch was sold in 2023 and possible jurisdictional issues surrounding any potential prosecutions.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico; editing by Donna Bryson, David Gaffen and Cynthia Osterman)
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