You're Not Going to Believe This
NM's Epstein Survivors Truth Commission is recruiting random citizen volunteers from a partisan political group to be "investigators," after giving Texas law firm $750,000 to "lead the investigation"
As of this week, the New Mexico Truth Commission is actively recruiting unpaid random volunteers through Indivisible Albuquerque, a Democratic Party activist organization, to read through millions of pages in the Dept. of Justice’s Epstein files, and then tell the commission’s legal team what investigators need to focus on.
This is not a joke.
But this state certainly seems to be.
U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury, D-Albuquerque, personally contacted Rayellen Smith, president of Indivisible Albuquerque and current sitting Treasurer of the New Mexico Democratic Party, to request the volunteer investigators from the group’s membership list. Smith then distributed a recruitment email to her members, and a member forwarded that email to me.
The volunteer investigator signup link from Indivisible Albuquerque goes to a Google Form. I shit you not. A. Google. Form.
No vetting.
No security protocol.
No nondisclosure agreements.
No chain of custody.
A free consumer product on a private corporate server, collecting the names of random Democratic party activists who are being called to sift through more than 3 million Dept. of Justice files to determine what and who in New Mexico investigators should examine in the state’s largest-ever child sex trafficking and political/law enforcement coverup case.
Among those files, as I've discovered since I began investigating in January, are the names of several prominent New Mexico Democrats who remain powerful figures in this state today. John J. Kelly — Epstein's personal attorney-in-fact for the purchase of Zorro Ranch, who opened no investigation into Epstein during his two terms as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico — currently sits as chair of the Albuquerque Board of Ethics and Campaign Practices, appointed by Mayor Tim Keller. Former Governor Bruce King sold Epstein the Zorro Ranch in 1993 while serving as governor. His son, former Attorney General Gary King, as the state's top law enforcement officer arranged private lunches with Epstein, accepted campaign donations routed through shell companies specifically designed, in Epstein's own words, to avoid "press coverage" for King in the wake of Epstein’s Florida conviction, and flew on Epstein's plane during his 2014 gubernatorial campaign while lying to the press about knowing it was Epstein's. Gary King currently chairs the board of the New Mexico Children's Foundation. Deb Haaland, who flew on that same Epstein plane alongside Gary King during the 2014 campaign in which she ran as his lieutenant governor candidate, is currently the frontrunner in the Democratic primary for governor of New Mexico, with a June 2 primary date. And former Governor Bill Richardson, named directly as a sexual predator in the Epstein files, remains one of the most celebrated figures in New Mexico Democratic Party history.
“Confidentiality is imperative,” the form states.
Google Forms cannot make confidentiality imperative. Sending an imperative call for confidentiality out to an activist email list with a link to a Google form is also not confidential.
We are ruled by idiots. Corrupt idiots. But idiots nonetheless.
I write this as a lifelong democrat, by the way. As heartbreaking as it has been to discover just how deeply unethical so many people in my beloved home state’s Democratic party are has been painful, and eye opening. But I am not so attached to a political identity that I’m going to refuse to call corruption out when I see it, even if it’s my own party.
It is increasingly clear most of our elected officials do not share this ability. The entire management of this commission and its “investigation” point to a desire to seem like they’re investigating the coverup their own party enabled, while simultaneously trying to turn it into yet one more thing to blame on Donald Trump — who, by the way, is also a piece of shit and all over the Epstein files.
Two seemingly opposing truths can, in fact, be true at the same time. The democrats can be who covered for Epstein in New Mexico, while the republicans can be the ones who covered for him in, say, Florida.
Politicizing a child sex trafficking operation is the only thing I can think of that’s worse than, say, politicizing a virus, or its vaccine. Yet here we are.
The commission has a $2 million budget. It has already promised $750,000 of that to Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy and Conaway — a personal injury firm from Texas with no documented experience in government investigations, transnational financial crimes, or sex trafficking cases — selected through a compromised procurement process THE PUGILIST has previously documented. The firm was given nearly $1 million by commissioners whose campaigns their leadership had funded, to lead the investigation. That work is now being farmed out not to detectives or professional researchers, but to activist volunteers aligned with the same political party whose leaders protected Epstein for decades in our state and in some cases participated in his crimes.
The investigation’s subjects include former Governor Bill Richardson, named as an abuser in the Epstein files, and former Attorney General Gary King, who declined to investigate Epstein despite documented evidence of crimes on New Mexico soil. Both are Democrats. The commission chairs are Democrats. The leaders of the law firm the commission hired have served or are serving on a Democratic PAC network. The volunteers are being recruited by a Democratic congresswoman through a Democratic activist organization.
Democrats are recruiting Democratic activists to filter evidence in an investigation of Democratic officials, in a state where Epstein’s cohorts, enablers and protectors were largely Democrats. This is not an investigation. This is the self-protective partisan management of an investigation’s outcomes under the false appearance of bipartisan due process.
Commission chair Representative Andrea Romero recently told a constituent that THE PUGILIST’s investigative reporting on Zorro Ranch was too riddled with inaccuracies to be worth the commission’s time. She named no inaccuracies. She cannot. The commission’s response to months of documented professional investigative journalism into the Epstein protection network in New Mexico was to try to discredit my work. Then they put out a call for random unpaid partisan activists to start the investigation from scratch, using a Google form to collect names.
The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and the government, law enforcement and journalistic coverup in New Mexico deserve forensic accountants, human trafficking specialists, and attorneys with documented expertise in transnational financial crime. They deserve a real and independent reckoning. They deserve a process no one can buy, staff, or filter.
They will never get that from this government, because the people in charge are all still too connected to the people who protected Epstein, and they are sufficiently self-interested to prefer the performance of an investigation to a real investigation.
Shame on them all.
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I sent Stansbury a message from her web site (as a constituent). I asked her to contact you because you have pertinent information.. I am not real eloquent but I’m sure she got the point. I will continue to contact her because I am so disappointed in her and the commission! I admire you tenacity and respect your commitment!
Absolutely, shame on them all. And absolutely, I am proud of you for laying this all out so succinctly.