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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 property.
Federal investigators made an informal deal with the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) to provide evidence for New Mexico's investigation into Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas told the DCNF. The U.S. attorney's 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 in an exclusive interview.
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 Comey's daughter released with other Epstein files earlier this year.
Balderas sent a letteron Monday to the current New Mexico Attorney General calling out the "SDNY, and by proxy the U.S. DOJ" for their role in what he alleged was a direct impediment to his office's investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's 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. (RELATED: Trump AG Nominee, Democrat Senator Come To Blows Over Epstein Files)
"Agreed NMDOJ will stop interviews + refer all matters to SDNY. SDNY will refer any state-related matters to NMAG @ [the] conclusion of SDNY case," 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.
"We spoke with the New Mexico AG's 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," Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, wrote in the September email. "We have not communicated with anyone from the New Mexico AG's office since that conversation in July 2019."
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 NMDOJ's evidence and interviews.
Zorro Ranch first entered the national spotlight in a 2003 Vanity Fair profile that described Epstein's 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.
Balderas's letter came after Torrez accused the Justice Department of stonewalling New Mexico's 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.
"The 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," Balderas' letter from Monday says. "Certainly, 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."
"I mean, we almost would have got that guy, but hehung himself, and then it got a little more complicated, and the DOJ [Department of Justice] still promised us info to let us finish our job at the state level," Balderas told the DCNF. "My angle today in contemporary time is not only to continue to tell the story of what happened when they interfered, but I'm also going to draw attention to the current AG [Attorney General of New Mexico, Raúl Torrez] who's getting jammed, and the Truth Commission ... What I'm doing is drawing their attention to the fact that there was evidence that we [the New Mexico and New York offices] had an agreement, and they burned me, and now I think they're burning Raúl."
The DOJ told the DCNF that it cannot release those records due to legal constraints.
"Federal 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," a DOJ spokesperson told the DCNF. "We will continue to follow federal law and the court orders that are in place."
"If the state can't get the damn records, I hope the state will sue under some states' rights theory," Balderas told the DCNF. "What I'm trying to do is tell the current AG [New Mexico attorney general] and the Truth Commission, I might be your best litigation witness ... it's ratcheting up."
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 Epstein's ranch, Balderas told the DCNF.
"Notwithstanding this, the agreement with the SDNY prosecutors was not to simply stop or to stay out of their way," Balderas' letter says. "Instead, my administration had a firm agreement with the SDNY that they have not honored to this day."
'We That Believe This Ranch Was Used By Epstein'
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.
"It's totally bizarre," Balderas told the DCNF. "I sent a letter in 2020 saying, 'Hey guys, I don't know. You clearly ghosted me for a year, but aren't you going to seize the ranch in forfeiture?' ... then even in 2022, they used some of our evidence in sentencing against Ghislaine [Maxwell, Epstein's girlfriend], and they still hadn't gotten back to us with any exchange of information and the updates ... It's very uncommon. And we had a history, by the way, of cooperating, working well with federal authorities in 2019."
Balderas also called for federal authorities to seize the property in the letter.
"Our office has provided investigative evidence regarding Jeffrey Epstein's use of the Zorro Ranch, located in Stanley, New Mexico, to assist federal prosecutors," Balderas' letter, presumably to the former United States Attorney Audrey Strauss from July 8, 2020 states. "We 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 Epstein's associates and co-conspirators."
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.
"Did 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," 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.
"What's recently come to light as ... half the files have been made public. I've gone through them and learned through the FBI that they did not share those tips [about the bodies] with us," Balderas told the DCNF. "That's something that they could have called us back and said, 'Hey, we don't have probable cause, but anything related to bodies is state jurisdiction' ... I use that as an example that yes, they didn't keep their end of the deal. Plus, they didn't share critical information, like tips that went to them that they should have normally [shared]."
Balderas said he believes the DOJ ignored his team of investigators on purpose.
"I don't think it was an accident that they didn't get back to us," Balderas told the DCNF. "I guess that's a different way to say that ... I think them ghosting us was intentional and different conduct than normal federal-state behavior."
The DOJ may even be going directly against the agreement that was reached between the NMDOJ and the federal DOJ, Balderas said.
"DOJ is going back even on their deal, which is even kind of shadier than just hey, we're going to jam you and then leave," Balderas said. "They misrepresented that they were going to be a cooperating agency to a state prosecution, which, to your question, is like why?"
"[The NMDOJ] already had a felony theory on Epstein on July 2 ... and then July 6 they [the New York office] indicted Epstein. So this was really a barn-burner," Balderas told the DCNF. "Like we were an elite prosecution unit, so for the Truth Commission to be like, 'Hey, AG, did you do enough?' 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 didn't 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 it's basically really adding insight that New Mexico had an elite prosecution unit."
New Mexico state representatives are currently in the process of investigating Epstein's 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 Epstein's Zorro Ranch, Balderas is concerned that critical evidence may have been removed or destroyed in the elapsed time between the initial NMDOJ investigation.
"The [New Mexico] 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," 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. "Bill" Hall, passed the New Mexico House unanimously.
"At 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," 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.
"They asked us to pause interviewing [suspects, victims and persons of interest], which then does pause building probable cause to enter the [Ranch]," Balderas told the DCNF. "We would have searched to then corroborate victim testimony, but because they asked us to pause, we thought it was in the victim's interest to pause and let them complete their federal prosecution."
"They [the SDNY] should have told us that they were concluding. They never did after Ghislaine, and they just ghosted us," Balderas told the DCNF. "There was an agreement there ... they were gonna get them first. So then what happens after that? Then you're able to evaluate all the bad faith once you know that war room game plan on both sides. Now they're just saying no comment."
