Epstein - The Trail in the Records

Investigators in New Mexico are forcing JPMorgan, Google, and more than two dozen companies to preserve their records related to Jeffrey Epstein. Because the federal Department of Justice is not releasing the unredacted files, they are searching for the truth about Zorro Ranch where it may still remain - in the records of banks and airlines, and in the archives of online services.

Investigators for the State of New Mexico have instructed JPMorgan Chase, Google, and more than two dozen additional companies to preserve all records connected to Jeffrey Epstein and several of his associates, a sign of how far the investigation into his former Zorro Ranch has expanded. The letters, obtained through a public records request, compel the companies to retain their files while the state Department of Justice prepares subpoenas after reopening the case this year. The requests extend across all companies that may have intersected with Epstein’s activities - banks and telephone companies, airlines and major technology firms. Sent last month, they request not only data concerning Epstein himself but also records relating to his longtime assistant Lesley Groff and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a federal sentence for sex trafficking, as well as communications with anyone connected to the three. Groff has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Additional letters are expected to follow, the agency announced, including requests concerning records belonging to Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, Epstein’s longtime attorney and accountant, who serve as executors of his estate. They have also denied wrongdoing.

The reopening was carried out with deep respect for the survivors, the work of investigative journalists, and the commitment to accountability, Attorney General Raúl Torrez said. The letters are only one step. His investigation depends on testimony from survivors, and authorities continue searching for anyone with information about abuse or other crimes connected to the ranch. Zorro Ranch, covering roughly twelve square miles and located about thirty miles south of Santa Fe, was one of several Epstein properties, alongside the townhouse in Manhattan, the estate in Palm Beach, and his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He purchased it in 1993 and built a secluded mansion there. At least ten women and girls have said they were recruited or abused there, including well known plaintiffs who described Epstein and Maxwell abusing them on the property.

New attention returned to the property after the Department of Justice released the Epstein files. They brought renewed focus to allegations of abuse and included an unconfirmed claim that two girls had died and were secretly buried on the grounds, a suspicion that contributed to authorities searching the ranch this year. It should be noted that this claim is highly vague and appears to rely entirely on alleged hearsay, including a story involving a taxi driver who claimed to have overheard a passenger’s phone call. The allegation had already appeared in files years ago without producing any substantiated evidence.

Among the recipients are major financial institutions such as JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, along with American Express, the payment service PayPal, the nation’s largest airlines, and the industry entity that processes airline ticket data. Travel providers such as Expedia were also contacted. A second group of letters went to telecommunications and technology providers such as AT&T and Verizon as well as email and messaging services including Google, WhatsApp, and Yahoo. Deutsche Bank stated that it would cooperate with authorities. The others did not comment. Every recipient was asked to preserve anything previously provided to the FBI or the federal Department of Justice.

Since reopening the case in February, Torrez says he requested full unredacted access to the federal government’s Epstein files and did not receive it. The route through private companies therefore gives state investigators another path to evidence. A spokesperson for the federal department responded that assistance had not been withheld from any authority investigating possible criminal conduct connected to Epstein. New Mexico’s earlier investigation into Zorro Ranch had been closed in 2019 at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The reopened investigation now runs alongside an independent truth commission established by the state legislature, which has also issued subpoenas to agencies and banks, including police departments. The attorney general’s authority does not extend beyond alleged abuse connected to Epstein’s other properties.

What emerges is a strange picture of accountability. A case closed in 2019 at the request of those in power is now being reopened against that backdrop, and because the federal government is not releasing the files it possesses, a state must reconstruct the life of a dead man from bank records and flight manifests, and from the servers that stored his messages. What people conceal, machines preserved, and perhaps there is a bitter comfort in that - that a wire transfer or a stored message is harder to erase than a human being. But in the end, this is not about documents. It is about the women and girls who lost something on that property that no one can return to them, and about whether the truth, locked away for so long, will still reach someone willing to answer for it.

To be continued .....