Overview
- New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday seeking unredacted Department of Justice Epstein materials or a formal Touhy reconsideration and asking a D.C. court to declare the DOJ’s refusals unlawful.
- The complaint says the files are critical to the state’s reopened Zorro Ranch criminal probe because they may identify victims, witnesses and co‑conspirators needed to bring charges.
- The Justice Department says it has provided some responsive material but says protective court orders and statutes bar disclosure of victim‑identifying information and that New Mexico has offered no lawful basis for broad release.
- A bipartisan New Mexico House Truth Commission released an interim report criticizing heavy and inconsistent redactions in the DOJ releases and saying those redactions make it hard to build a verifiable timeline of events at Zorro Ranch.
- The litigation, now pending in federal court, could set precedent for how federal agencies balance survivor privacy with state access to investigatory records and may shape the scope of future state prosecutions and congressional scrutiny of DOJ practices.