Seventeen Years Ago, An Epstein Survivor Said Four New Mexico Politicians Knew About Epstein's Pedophilia and Child Sex Trafficking.
No one has ever done anything about them. One currently sits on the board of the state's largest children's nonprofit.
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A civil court document obtained by THE PUGILIST from the Epstein Files and Trial Archive reveals that a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking network gave sworn testimony in 2009 naming four powerful New Mexico politicians as possessing knowledge of Epstein’s finances and his sexual exploitation of minor girls. The testimony was filed in active Palm Beach County litigation, available to law enforcement for seventeen years, and apparently ignored entirely by New Mexico officials — including the men named in it. As of today, not one of them has been investigated. THE PUGILIST is the first New Mexico news outlet to report on this document.
The document, case number 50 2008 CA 028051, filed in the 15th Judicial Circuit of Palm Beach County, Florida, and appearing in the DOJ files as EFTA00727690, contains interrogatory answers from an anonymous plaintiff — a minor girl at the time of the abuse — who described being trafficked by Epstein beginning at age 14, visiting his Palm Beach home more than 100 times between 2002 and 2005, and personally recruiting more than 50 other minor girls for him at $200 per girl. The abuse she describes occurred in Florida. Under oath, she identified more than 60 individuals she believed had knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and finances. Among them: the sitting governor of New Mexico, the state’s attorney general, its land commissioner, and the sheriff whose jurisdiction covered Zorro Ranch.
Here is what those four men did after that testimony was filed — and where they are now.
Governor Bill Richardson had received $50,000 in Epstein campaign donations. According to a sworn federal deposition by survivor Virginia Giuffre, Richardson sexually abused Giuffre at Zorro Ranch on multiple occasions — abuse that occurred on New Mexico soil. Richardson denied all allegations. After leaving the governorship in 2011, he remained one of the most prominent Democratic figures in the country, operating his Richardson Center diplomatic foundation and continuing to negotiate the release of political prisoners abroad. He was never investigated. He died in September 2023. His death closed the door on any accountability. The DOJ file drop in January 2026 prove his denials about riding on Epstein’s plane, visiting his island, and being in the company of underaged girls were lies.
Attorney General Gary King served as New Mexico’s top law enforcement official from 2007 through 2014 — the entire period following the filing of the Palm Beach complaint. During those eight years, he accepted at least $45,000 in Epstein donations routed through shell companies specifically designed, per Epstein’s own attorney, to avoid “additional press coverage” given that King was campaigning on his record prosecuting child sex offenders. In 2010 — two years after Epstein was already a convicted sex offender — King met privately with him for lunch at a Santa Fe restaurant, the meeting arranged on official government email. King personally thanked Epstein for a pledged $50,000 fundraising commitment toward his 2014 gubernatorial campaign and flew on an Epstein-chartered jet during that campaign, later claiming he had no idea the plane was Epstein’s. The emails say otherwise. He launched zero investigations into Zorro Ranch during his entire tenure as the state’s chief law enforcement officer.
After losing the 2014 gubernatorial race, King did not fade from public life. He took on a series of roles placing him in direct and trusted contact with the state’s most vulnerable children: he served as a court-appointed guardian ad litem — a legal advocate for abused and neglected children who cannot protect themselves — in the Seventh Judicial District; he served on the board of CASA, the Court Appointed Special Advocates program, which recruits and trains volunteers to represent abused children in court, a position he held until his name disappeared from the organization’s website following THE PUGILIST’s first investigative report on his relationship with Epstein; he sat on the board of the Boy Scouts of New Mexico; and he was twice invited by the U.S. State Department to brief the United Nations Commission on the Rights of Children on combating child trafficking. Today, King chairs the board of the New Mexico Children’s Foundation, the state’s largest children’s nonprofit. He has never been investigated. He has never been charged with any crime.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano, whose office held primary jurisdiction over Zorro Ranch, accepted a $2,000 campaign donation from Epstein in August 2005. When Epstein was indicted the following year, Solano publicly refused to return the money, saying he had already spent it. His office conducted no investigations into alleged sex crimes at Zorro Ranch during his tenure, which ran from 2003 to 2010. It emerged during that same period that Solano had been running a parallel criminal operation of his own: stealing county property — body armor, police equipment, office supplies — and selling it on eBay for gambling money. He was arrested on 251 counts of embezzlement and fraud, resigned before the end of his term in November 2010, and pleaded guilty. He served six weeks in the county jail he had once run. He has held no public office since. He was never investigated for any connection to Epstein.
Land Commissioner and former Albuquerque Mayor Jim Baca received a $10,000 Epstein campaign donation during his 2006 run for state land commissioner, a race he lost. Before that, Governor Richardson had appointed him New Mexico Natural Resource Trustee, a position he held until 2009 — the same year the Palm Beach survivor filed the sworn testimony naming him. Baca, now 80, has been out of public life since. He has never been investigated.
The New Mexico Epstein Truth Commission is currently underway. It has not addressed this document publicly. The state legislature, law enforcement, and federal authorities have had access to this testimony since 2009. In the seventeen years since it was filed, not one of the four New Mexico politicians named in it has faced so much as a formal inquiry.
I offer these posts freely, but your support is necessary and appreciated. Please subscribe, paid if you’re able, and share my work if it moves you. Likes and comments help, too. Also, tips.
I cannot say out loud what I want to happen to these people but I hope a father an uncle a brother a cousin a nephew, a doctor a teacher or maybe just a friend put some names together and says I will find justice for those they abused. The laws of our land will never find justice for them. Poor sweet children.
It’s disgusting and, sadly, so common now. I’d ask if we will ever “return” to decency, but I fear we’ve never truly arrived in the first place. I can only pray for more empathy and justice in—and for— all of us. 😢