New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez revealed on Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice has not been cooperating with the state's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's former property Zorro Ranch. Torrez gave the remarks at the World Without Exploitation Annual Conference. Torrez said the U.S. DOJ has not granted him or his investigators full, unredacted access to the Epstein Files.
During his speech at the conference, Torrez reaffirmed the commitment of the New Mexico Department of Justice to support survivors and thoroughly investigate the alleged criminal activity at Zorro Ranch.
Torrez said he knows that survivors are QUOTE, "profoundly and justifiably disappointed in the federal government's response." He maintained that his office is working hard to put together a complete story of what happened at Zorro Ranch.
Torrez's full remarks:
First, I want to thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to come and meet with all of you. I think one of the things that I should start with is an apology.
As a New Mexican, as a husband, as a father of a 16-year-old girl, but more importantly, as a career prosecutor, it is shameful that Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to do what he did with impunity in the State of New Mexico for so long, and for that I am very, very sorry.
I am glad that we've had some success in terms of taking on big tech companies. I'm extremely proud to have secured the first victory against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg to the tune of $375 million, not only because of what we know it does to mental health, particularly young girls, the way it facilitates all of the most harmful behaviors, but frankly, because it is the world's largest online marketplace for predators.
I want to make sure you understand what we are doing now, and I'd like to share where I come from and how I got into this space. My mom's a public school teacher. My dad was a career federal prosecutor. I didn't have the gumption to follow my mom into the classroom, because that's way more difficult than being a lawyer.
So, I decided to be a prosecutor and follow my father's footsteps, and I didn't really know what it meant, right? In law school, they don't teach you what it is; what they do is teach you how to introduce evidence, talk to a judge, and make a presentation to a jury, but that's not really what it means to be a prosecutor.
I didn't really understand what my dad did, because he was working on very violent, complicated things, and he kept me out of the courtroom intentionally for security reasons. But what I knew is that whatever work he had done in the courtroom involved people in the community that were strangers to us, that would approach him, and pull him aside and whisper in his ear, and just share something, and there was an emotional connection there that I didn't really understand.
When I came home, I was, again, not very creative and followed him to a rural county just south of Albuquerque. I wanted to get as much trial experience as I could get as quickly as I could, because, like most lawyers, I was very interested in showing people how good I was in front of a jury.
When I was getting ready for my very first case, a case that no one else really wanted to touch in the office – it was a shaken baby case that involved a young boy who had been badly abused by his father – it was my job to prepare the expert testimony in that case, and I wanted to make sure I didn't make any mistakes.
So, I called my dad, hoping he would give me inside tips on what to do, and it was very curious: he asked me a very simple question. He said, “Have you met this little boy?” I didn't understand it as a young lawyer, because Marcelino was about a year-and-a-half at the time, about six months old when he was abused, he couldn't be part of that trial, and so it didn't make sense to me. He said it was the only advice he gave and that you should do that.
So, the foster parents brought this little boy in his baby carrier to meet with me in this tiny little office. It was this beautiful baby, and you know, at first I couldn't see the damage that had been done. Still, as they got him out of his baby carrier, they started to interact with this little boy; you could see how much harm had been inflicted and how much his life would change forever, and he looked like somebody who could be in my family.
The foster family just loved him, and were doing everything they could to try and help him be a survivor, and help him get his life back on track. After we were done, I talked to them about the trial. I talked to them about what was going to happen, and they left, and I went outside, and I was in the parking lot of this small district attorney's office, and I started crying.
I called my then girlfriend, now wife, and I said, “I made a terrible mistake, I can't do this, I shouldn't be doing this.” In other words, my father's lesson to me was that this was not about me in any way. My wife let me cry for a while, and then she said, “Okay, are you done with that?” She said, “Look, you went to school, you accumulated all this debt, did all these things, for what? Because somebody has to go into that courtroom and be a voice for that little boy. Someone has to go in, someone has to look into the darkness, someone has to see the things that other people don't want to see.”
And it was a life switch for me, because it gave me a sense of purpose I never had before, and from that moment on, I continued to volunteer for the things other prosecutors and police officers didn't want to do.
I started volunteering at the All Faiths Receiving Home. I went to the All Faiths Receiving Home every other week, and I would listen to three and four and five-year-olds disclose sexual assault, child abuse, and other things like that. From there, I went on to handle internet crimes against children, child pornography, and child solicitation cases.
When you do that work, and you have the memories of survivors that come into the system, – they are looking for answers, they are looking for a resolution, and they are trying to find something to hold on to – your role in that space takes on special meaning.
It wasn't until I had had those moments on my own, a little girl who had been sexually abused by someone who was let into her home, who I had to sit next to during a pretrial witness interview with a fifty-year-old defense investigator – when he [the accused] was convicted, when she brought her teddy bear into the courtroom, she came over and she asked me if it's done – those are the things that stay with you.
I wanted to tell you that story because I don't want anyone in this room, particularly Epstein survivors, to look at me and think of somebody who is another man in a blue suit making promises.
I can't imagine the pain and heartache that were done at Zorro Ranch, the marks that were left, and I can't imagine the strength, determination, and grace it takes to lift yourself up and find community. I know that not everyone makes it on that journey. But, if we are going to build a community and a country we can be proud of, we have to have a criminal justice system that is worthy of those survivors, and that's what we try to do each and every day.
Now, you will not hear a great deal from our office while this investigation is underway, except for two things. Number one, a plea, which I give to this room and please carry forward: to have survivors work with us and tell us their story if they are able, so that if justice can be had, even at this late day, even with this much time delayed, that we can help be a part of that. And, number two: a commitment to hold anyone to account regardless of how powerful they are, how politically connected they are, regardless of their party, regardless of their station, it doesn't much matter to me. If you doubt that, just ask Donald Trump. I've sued him 46 times in the last year; we’ve also sued Elon Musk, really gotten after Mark Zuckerberg.
Look, I don't want to make promises, other than to give you my commitment that we will be true and honest warriors on your behalf to the extent we can. I will also highlight that we need your help in one other respect.
We have asked the Department of Justice for complete, unredacted access to the Epstein Files, and we still don't have it. I know this is not a shock to survivors. I know survivors have been profoundly and justifiably disappointed in the federal government's response to this, but this is an active law-enforcement investigation, and we are working very hard to put together a complete account of what happened at Zorro Ranch. Whether that results in an indictment and a criminal prosecution is yet to be determined.
What will not be left aside is the opportunity to look at the criminal justice system through the eyes of survivors. For too long, there have been police and prosecutors who engage in this work who do not place survivors at the center of what they do, and this will not be the case in New Mexico.
If survivors work with us, and they go through the considerable trauma and muster the courage to come and talk to yet another team of investigators, and they decide that this is something that they can't move forward with, there's a criminal prosecution on the table, we will never and I will never put a survivor in a position where she has to make that choice, because I am aware that people live with these scars long after the criminal justice system is done with it or a criminal investigation is done with it.
But, I want you to know that we are not going to stop, we are not going to back out, and you have somebody in the New Mexico Department of Justice, if only in that place. We are committed to trying to shine a light on one of the darkest chapters in my state's history, and that I think that offers at least some glimmer of hope for people who look at 35 to 40 years of government inaction and a lack of accountability, and that hopefully gives them some sense that something decent and good can come from this.
Because, there are women and girls in my state right now that are faced with this problem, there are women and girls in my state in Indian country, in reservations, in pueblos, in parts of my community that are neglected and overlooked because of poverty, because of lack of access, because of resources, that are being trafficked right now, and my community doesn't do it in the way that they should.
They don't understand it in the way that we should. We still have too many officers who see a victim of trafficking and at first see a suspect or a potential defendant. There is an opportunity to take this case and this investigation and teach my community and teach the world more about what it means to survive, and to demand dignity from a system that often fails to deliver.
So, I can't thank you enough for everything that you do, and if you don't hear much about what we're doing, that's by design. I come from an old-school understanding of prosecution, where we don't talk about what we do, but don't mistake that for a lack of action or a lack of interest. We want to hear everyone's story, and we can't hide from the truth.
So, thank you again for being part of this. Thank you again for your engagement and your advocacy, and for all of us who, frankly, came before and failed to deliver what is society's most important objective – justice.
