Justice Department declines New Mexico's request for Epstein grand-jury material

The U.S. Department of Justice on 15 July 2026 formally declined a request from New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez to release grand-jury materials from the federal case against the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to a letter obtained by Al Jazeera English. In the response, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that any decision to disclose grand-jury testimony lies with the federal courts that supervised the panel, not with the executive branch or with state attorneys general.

The rejection lands at a moment when the Trump administration's posture toward the Epstein files has visibly hardened, and when state-level investigators in New Mexico argue they have jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed on state soil. It also widens an emerging split between federal custodians of the Epstein record and state authorities who say they have been left to chase evidence through civil discovery and witness interviews.

What Blanche actually wrote

The Blanche letter, dated 15 July 2026 and addressed to Torrez, frames the request as procedurally out of bounds. According to Al Jazeera English, Blanche wrote that "the decision whether to disclose grand jury materials in this case is one for the United States District Court that supervised the grand jury," and that "the Department has no authority to direct such disclosure." The letter did not address the substantive question of whether the materials should eventually see the light of day.

Torrez had asked the Justice Department in late June to turn over any grand-jury testimony relating to allegations of sex trafficking and abuse tied to Epstein's Zorro Ranch, a property in Union County, New Mexico, where the financier hosted prominent figures in politics, finance and royalty for decades. Torrez's office is pursuing a separate state investigation and has said it needs the federal record to corroborate witness accounts and to evaluate potential charges against co-conspirators.

The Blanche reply is procedurally narrow and politically wide. It is true, as a matter of federal criminal procedure under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, that the department cannot unilaterally release grand-jury material without a court order. But the letter did not announce that the department would petition the relevant court in support of disclosure, an option available to it. That omission is what New Mexico officials seized on.

The state counter-narrative

Torrez, a Democrat who took office in 2023, has cast his inquiry as a victim-centred effort rather than a partisan one. In a public statement following the department's response, his office said the federal government has "both the standing and the moral obligation" to assist state investigators and accused Washington of treating the Epstein matter as a "closed chapter."

State investigators have spent the past eighteen months conducting witness interviews in New Mexico, Texas and Florida, according to filings in a related civil case. They have also issued subpoenas to former staff at Zorro Ranch and to at least one corporate entity that managed Epstein's private aircraft during the years covered by the federal plea deal struck in 2008 in West Palm Beach.

New Mexico's leverage is real but limited. The state can compel testimony from witnesses inside its jurisdiction, but it cannot reach sealed federal grand-jury transcripts without a court order. It can also refer evidence of federal crimes to U.S. attorney's offices in New Mexico or Florida, which is the route Torrez has signalled he intends to follow if the federal record remains closed.

What this fight is actually about

Beyond the specifics of one letter, the dispute is a localised version of a broader pattern: federal law enforcement holding the keys to records that victims and state authorities say they need, and a Congress that has so far declined to use its subpoena power on the matter. Coverage of the Epstein case has long run on the language of official spokespeople, particularly from the Department of Justice. The voices that get less column space are the survivor advocates and the state-level prosecutors who say they have been working the case with fewer tools.

The grand-jury record in the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was indicted in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges before his death in a federal detention facility that August, is a separate but related reservoir. The Justice Department released some Epstein-related documents earlier in 2026 following a court order in a civil case brought by one of his accusers, but the grand-jury material itself remains under seal. New Mexico's request is for material from a different proceeding, the 2007–2008 federal investigation that produced the non-prosecution agreement widely criticised as too lenient.

There is also a quieter procedural point. Under Rule 6(e), a prosecutor can petition a court to disclose grand-jury material when "a strong necessity" is shown. The Justice Department has used that mechanism in other high-profile cases. The Blanche letter does not foreclose that path; it simply declines to walk it. That is why critics inside and outside New Mexico read the response as a deflection rather than a legal dead end.

What to watch next

The short calendar is the federal docket. If New Mexico wants the grand-jury material, it can file a motion in the U.S. District Court that supervised the original 2008 plea proceedings, naming the Department of Justice as a respondent, and ask the court to order disclosure on the "particularized need" standard. That filing, if made, will draw immediate attention because it forces a federal judge to publicly weigh the public interest in disclosure against the secrecy interests that have shielded the Epstein record for almost two decades.

The longer horizon is congressional. Several members of the House Judiciary Committee have asked for the same material in a series of letters that, as of mid-July, have produced no public commitment from Attorney General Pamela Bondi to act on them. Whether the Blanche letter is the department's final answer or its opening position will become clearer the first time a federal judge is asked to weigh in.

For now, the practical effect is that New Mexico's investigators continue to build a record without access to the most concentrated body of sworn federal testimony about Epstein's network. Whether that record is enough to support state charges against individuals other than Epstein is the next question, and it is one Torrez's office has so far declined to preview.

This article was reported using publicly available statements and contemporaneous wire reporting. Where the federal and state accounts diverge, both versions are presented.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/aljazeeraglobal/2868664377
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Rule_6(e)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro_Ranch
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Torrez
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Bondi