New Mexico lawmakers have launched a new investigation into allegations of trafficking and sexual abuse at a ranch outside Santa Fe once owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The 7,600-acre property was owned by Epstein from 1993 until his death in a New York jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019, and the property was mentioned numerous times in the so-called Epstein files released by the Department of Justice over the last few months.
Read More: Hillary Clinton Accuses Trump Administration of Epstein Files ‘Cover-Up’
A bipartisan committee of four lawmakers, known as a “truth committee,” will seek testimony from survivors of alleged sexual abuse at the ranch as part of the $2.5 million investigation authorized by legislation passed unanimously by lawmakers on Monday.
Although law enforcement has probed several of Epstein’s other properties—including his island in the Caribbean, his apartment in Manhattan, and his Palm Beach estate—his New Mexico property has received much less attention.
“The crimes that were reported to federal and state authorities were never fully investigated,” State Representative Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat, said in a video posted after the vote.
The New Mexico State House “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,” the Bill said. It was co-sponsored by two Democrats, Andrea Romero, who represents Santa Fe, and Rep. Marianna Anaya; and two Republicans, Rep. Andrea Reeb and Rep. Bill Hall.
A previous effort to investigate the ranch in 2019 by former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas was halted at the request of federal prosecutors in 2019 to avoid a “parallel investigation,” he told Reuters in a statement. A December 2019 email released in the Epstein files from federal authorities to the executors of Epstein’s estate said that federal agents had “not searched the New Mexico property.”
In a separate email in September 2019, Manhattan federal prosecutors said that they spoke with the New Mexico attorney general’s office, who they said had “agreed to cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered regarding sex trafficking activity with our office.”
Here’s what you need to know about the investigation and the Zorro Ranch.
What happened at the ranch?
Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch in 1993 from Bruce King, a three-time Democratic governor of New Mexico.
While it was not his full-time residence, it was allegedly the site of sex abuse and trafficking by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 as Epstein’s co-conspirator, according to court and law enforcement documents.
Numerous allegations centered on the ranch have emerged in the recently released Epstein files.
Brice Gordon, the ranch’s former manager, told the FBI that Epstein flew in guests and “masseuses” to the ranch, and hired local massage therapists to work there, according to a report Epstein files.
In one anonymous 2019 email addressed to then-Albuquerque mayoral candidate Eddy Aragon, someone alleged that two female victims, “foreign girls,” were buried in the hills near the ranch on the “orders of Jeffrey and Madam G.”
The New Mexico Department of Justice wrote to the DOJ last week seeking unredacted access to the email to investigate the matter.
The author of the anonymous email sent in Nov. 2019 claimed to have taken seven videos from Epstein’s home, including several depicting sex with minors, as “insurance in case of future litigation against Epstein.”
Several survivors have also alleged that they experienced abuse at Zorro Ranch, including Annie Farmer and “Jane,” both of whom testified at Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial.
Jane told prosecutors that she had been flown to New Mexico with Epstein and Maxwell, where she said she was sexually abused by Epstein alone at his ranch and was forced to engage in what she called “orgies.” Farmer testified at the same trial that she was abused by both Maxwell and Epstein at the ranch.
Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, said she had trafficked to the ranch and ordered to have sex with Epstein and other men there. In her defamation lawsuit against Maxwell, which she brought when Maxwell accused her of lying, she provided several photographs of herself at the ranch.
“To illustrate my connection to these places, I include four photographs taken of
me in New Mexico (shown below),” Giuffre captioned the photographs. “I was approximately 17 at the time, judging from the looks of it. At the end of the day we returned to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch.”
Another alleged victim, Chauntae Davis, told CBS News in 2019 that she “was raped on Zorro Ranch at least twice.”
Zorro Ranch was also the site where, according to the New York Times, Epstein hoped to use to seed the human race with his DNA using genetic engineering.
What will the investigation look like?
The commission has said it will “investigate allegations of criminal activity and public corruption” through survivor testimony, according to the resolution.
According to Romero, the testimony could be used in a court of law. The committee will likely conduct hearings and will have the authority to compel witness attendance, administer oaths, and issue subpoenas.
The first committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday and the resolution requires that an interim report be submitted to state House leadership on or before July 31. The investigation is funded through the end of this year, but it can be extended.
“With this Truth Commission, we can finally fill in the gaps by investigating the failures that led to the horrific allegations of abuse and crime at Zorro Ranch, so we can learn from them and prevent such atrocities from taking place in our state going forward,” Romero said in a statement following the resolution’s passage.
The commission will look to see whether local or state officers appropriately investigated the activity at the ranch, and whether legislative action could be needed to either punish such crimes, or prevent them from happening again.
Rep. Anaya said that one of the main goals of the committee is to “create more pathways for justice for all survivors of sexual abuse and assault in our state.”
The commission will be funded by a settlement between the New Mexico attorney general and financial services during an investigation of these institutions’ role “in failing to identify the sexual abuse and trafficking of underage girls at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch.”
Who owns the ranch now?
In 2023, Donald Huffines, a Texas businessman and former GOP state senator now running for comptroller, bought the Zorro Ranch.
Huffines, who describes himself as a “Trump Republican,” is the current front-runner in the comptroller race, according to Texas Tribune polling.
He said in a social media post on Monday that he would cooperate with any investigation.
“We have always maintained an open line of communication with local authorities. No law enforcement agency has ever approached me to request access, and I have always said unequivocally that any such request would be met with immediate access and full cooperation,” he wrote in the post, which his spokesman confirmed was genuine, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, the newspaper that first reported the ownership.
In a statement to the newspaper on Feb. 13, Huffines’ campaign spokesperson Allen Blakemore said: “Four years after Mr. Epstein’s death, the Huffines family purchased property in New Mexico listed at public auction whose proceeds benefited his victims. Prior to the auction listing, they had never visited the property.”
The New Mexican reported that the property was first listed for sale in July 2021 for $27.5 million, then later reduced to $18 million.
Huffines is campaigning to “DOGE Texas government,” a reference to replicating the work of Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which, in the first months of Donald Trump’s second term, dictated mass layoffs, contract cancellations, and restructuring in the federal government.
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