New Mexico lawmakers said Monday they are demanding documents from an array of government and private institutions as the first major step in their effort to tell the full story of what Jeffrey Epstein did in the state — and whether any other people should be prosecuted for crimes there.
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A committee known as the New Mexico Truth Commission expects to send subpoenas this week to 14 targets. They include federal agencies that investigated Epstein in the past — the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI — and state and local law enforcement agencies that looked into Epstein. Demands are also expected to go to Epstein’s former banks — Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase — and the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit scientific research institution he supported.
If the committee finds evidence that someone committed a crime that can be prosecuted, it will refer the case to the appropriate law enforcement agency, either in New Mexico or elsewhere, members said.
The goal is to “build a complete documented public record,” Republican state Rep. Andrea Reeb said at a meeting at the New Mexico State Capitol. “We will name what happened, we will name who was responsible, and we will do so with the evidentiary regard that survivors deserve and that the law requires.”
Reeb is one of four members of the bipartisan commission.
The commission is already working with the state Justice Department, which has reopened a criminal investigation that was shut down in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York. That agency is also seeking Epstein records from federal authorities.
Epstein, who bought a ranch outside Santa Fe in 1993 and typically visited several times a year, was never charged with crimes in New Mexico, despite allegations of sex crimes dating back decades.
At least 10 women have alleged that Epstein groomed or abused them at the 10,000-acre ranch starting in the mid-1990s, an NBC News review of court testimony, lawsuits and other records found. Half were teenagers when, they said, Epstein harmed them. No law enforcement agency had searched the ranch until this year.
The lost opportunities in New Mexico are part of a pattern with Epstein, starting with a state investigation in Florida, where he was accused of paying underage girls for sex. In 2008, he cut a deal with state and federal prosecutors that spared him serious jail time and ended an investigation of his activities in other states. He was required to register as a sex offender in Florida and New York, but not in New Mexico.
Federal investigators in New York picked up the case in 2019, after The Miami Herald published an exposé about the plea deal. The New York prosecution of Epstein largely left the New Mexico ranch unexamined. After Epstein died in jail, prosecutors went after accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell; her trial briefly mentioned allegations in New Mexico. She is in federal prison.
In January, the Justice Department released millions of Epstein-related documents, including new information about the efforts to shut down the state investigation in 2019 and new allegations of crimes at the ranch, the most troubling being an unsubstantiated allegation that two bodies were buried on the property. The revelations lit a fire in New Mexico to finally determine what happened at the ranch.
Commission members said Monday that their work will center on the experiences of survivors. They will look into not only sex trafficking and financial crime allegations but also possible “medical and scientific crimes,” said state Rep. Marianna Anaya, a Democrat. She did not explain that further.
The commission, whose work is funded by money the state collected in a settlement with Epstein’s banks, also expects to recommend changes to state laws to close gaps that may have prevented authorities from prosecuting Epstein or others.
The commission heard from one survivor, Rachel Benavidez, who says Epstein abused her while she was working as a licensed massage therapist at the ranch, and from the family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most outspoken victims, who died by suicide last year.
“We know Jeffrey Epstein could not have acted alone,” Benavidez said. “The tentacles of this evil network extend across academia, science, medicine, politics, finance and government.”
