Torrez Sues Blanche Over the Deal DOJ Broke
The Senate votes Friday on an acting attorney general who became a defendant Wednesday — named in New Mexico’s suit over the Epstein evidence it traded away in 2019.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued the Justice Department in federal court in Washington on Wednesday — and named Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general the Senate votes on Friday, as a defendant in his official capacity. The 40-page complaint, Case 1:26-cv-02762, asks a judge to set aside the department’s denial of New Mexico’s records request and compel production of the unredacted Epstein files the state says it needs to prosecute crimes at Zorro Ranch.
The complaint documents a trade. On a July 23, 2019 call, federal prosecutors told New Mexico to stand down its Epstein investigation. The state agreed, and that September handed over its entire file — police reports, recorded witness interviews — against a promise that the department would pass along anything it learned about state crimes. “In reliance on those assurances, New Mexico gave up timely access to witnesses, victims, and other evidence,” the state pleads. The department sent nothing back.
Narativ found the letter that tested that promise in the Epstein archive; it now sits in the suit as Exhibit 6. On July 8, 2020, then-Attorney General Hector Balderas warned that Epstein used the ranch “to facilitate the commission and prolonged concealment of his trafficking of children” and asked the department to seize it. The complaint’s verdict runs four words: “This request was ignored.” The filing also confirms what Narativ reported in January — federal law enforcement “failed to ever search Zorro Ranch,” even after an FBI email acknowledged “one victim who may have been raped at the NM residence.”
