N.M. Epstein Truth Commission Hired Law Firm Whose Founders Donated to Governor Bill Richardson, Named As Abuser in Epstein Files

The firm also has ties to a political action committee that donated to two members of the four member commission - Andrea Romero and Mariana Anaya - and to the sitting governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham

SANTA FE, N.M. — The New Mexico Legislature's Epstein Truth Commission has awarded 37.5 percent of its total $2 million budget — $750,000 in taxpayer funds — to a Texas personal injury firm led entirely by men, with several glaring conflicts of interest but close ties to the democratic party establishment in the state, including a former governor accused by Epstein survivors of sexual abuse. Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy & Conaway P.C. specializes in personal injury, wrongful death, and oilfield accident litigation.

The firm was hired by the commission to lead the investigation into why Jeffrey Epstein was never properly investigated, arrested, indicted or tried during his years operating Zorro Ranch, and why the ranch was never searched, despite numerous reports to law enforcement of child sex trafficking and even murder committed there by Epstein and others. Yet The Pugilist has found that the firm’s founding partners donated the maximum legal amount to a powerful politician named by survivors as a perpetrator and close friend to Epstein, according to Epstein himself: Gov. Bill Richardson.

The conflict of interest for Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy & Conaway in investigating Epstein in New Mexico doesn’t end there. The lead investigator for the firm previously sat on the board of a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to two of the commission members who voted to select Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy & Conaway, campaign finance records show.

Records filed with the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance Information System show the Committee on Individual Responsibility — the political action committee of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association — donated $5,200 to commission chair Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, in September 2022, and an additional $1,000 in October 2024. The PAC donated $1,000 to commission member Rep. Marianna Anaya, D-Albuquerque, in October 2024, one month before her first election to the legislature.

The same PAC donated $5,200 to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who served as state health secretary under Richardson from 2004 to 2007 and signed the bill creating the commission.

Both Romero and Anaya voted to award the contract to FCHC. Romero told reporters the firm was chosen from a pool of applicants after a fair and independent vetting process.

Joshua Conaway, the FCHC partner now leading the Truth Commission investigation, previously served as a board member of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, the parent organization of the PAC that funded both legislators’ campaigns, according to professional records.

A review of every PAC expenditure report filed across the 2022 and 2024 election cycles shows the committee donated exclusively to Democrats. The two Republican commission members received no donations from the PAC.

Federal Election Commission records show FCHC’s founding partners — Sam Fadduol, Richard Hardy, Jeffrey Cluff, and firm manager Selma Morales — each donated the maximum legal $2,300 to Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign in 2007, while Richardson was serving as New Mexico’s governor. Richardson was named by Virginia Giuffre in her 2016 deposition as one of her Epstein-introduced sexual abusers. Richardson denied the allegations until his death in September 2023. His denials were later contradicted by documentary evidence including flight logs released as part of the federal Epstein files released in 2026.

The procurement process that produced FCHC’s selection was also compromised by a conflict of interest. The process was controlled by Gerardo Paredes Jr., chief procurement officer of the Legislative Council Service. Paredes previously worked for the Texas State Comptroller’s office, the very office Zorro Ranch’s new owner, Donald Huffines, is running for now as a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate. Huffines’ son Russell serves in the Trump White House. Paredes served under the previous Trump-endorsed comptroller.

The commission’s stated justification for selecting FCHC cited “work on the January 6th Select Committee and other nationally significant matters.” That claim does not appear in any public record associated with the firm, including its attorneys’ official biographies.

FCHC’s Albuquerque office is a satellite location. The firm’s corporate headquarters is in Odessa, Texas. All named partners are men. None have documented experience in government investigation, congressional inquiry, or transnational financial crime.

The contract was finalized 19 days after the commission’s original announcement deadline. The Pugilist, an independent Substack-based news publication, had reported on Paredes’ potential conflict of interest three weeks before the contract was signed and demanded his recusal. Truth Commission committee member Anaya responded by saying the commission did not agree there was a conflict of interest.

This is not the first time Romero has faced questions about her handling of public funds. Before her election to the legislature, Romero served as executive director of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities, a public agency, under a $140,000-a-year contract. A 2018 audit found she had submitted a $1,850 dinner bill — including $380 in alcohol — to Los Alamos County for reimbursement, in violation of the coalition's travel policies, which expressly prohibited alcohol as an allowable expense. A subsequent audit covering a year and a half of her tenure found approximately $5,000 in impermissible expenses. The coalition later sought $8,000 in reimbursement from Romero's consulting LLC. Romero apologized at a board meeting, saying she had not known alcohol was prohibited. She was not criminally charged. She went on to win election to the New Mexico House of Representatives, where she now chairs the commission overseeing a $2 million taxpayer-funded investigation.

The pattern documented in public records raises a question the commission itself has not answered: whether the Truth Commission was ever intended to find the truth, or whether it is a public relations crisis intervention in the wake of revelations in the January 2026 file dump that the state took no real action against Epstein.

• To recap: The firm selected to investigate why New Mexico’s Democratic establishment failed to act on Epstein received its contract through a procurement process controlled by an official with documented ties to the Texas political machine surrounding the ranch’s current owner.

• The firm was selected by two Democratic legislators whose campaigns were funded by the firm’s own professional network.

• The sitting governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, who signed the commission into law received money from the same PAC.

• The firm’s founding partners donated to Bill Richardson, a governor named as a perpetrator in the Epstein files.

A serious investigation into institutional failure does not look like this. It does not hire a Texas personal injury firm with no government investigation experience. It does not route selection through a conflicted procurement officer. It does not hand 37.5 percent of its entire budget to a firm financially connected to the legislators approving the contract and to an accused abuser in the files it is supposed to be examining.

What this “investigation” does do — or appears to do — is create the public perception that New Mexico’s Democratic Party establishment is doing something to right the wrongs of the past, while ensuring the investigation itself remains safely in the hands of people with every reason to find nothing.

The survivors of Zorro Ranch deserve better. They have not gotten it yet.

Romero, Anaya, FCHC, and the commission did not respond to requests for comment.

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Campaign finance records cited in this report are publicly available through the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance Information System at login.cfis.sos.state.nm.us. Federal donation records are from FEC data compiled at city-data.com.