New Mexico Lawmakers Create ‘Special Committee’ to Investigate Zorro Ranch, Formerly Owned by Jeffrey Epstein

The New Mexico House of Representatives on Monday passed a resolution creating a “special committee” consisting of two House Republicans and two House Democrats which will “investigate Zorro ranch and the related allegations of criminal activity.”

Specifically, they are to “determine whether legislation or other legislative action is needed” to do any of the following:

• “prevent and properly punish crime”
• “protect children and other vulnerable persons”
• “establish sufficient procedures for securing civil justice”
• “ensure proper use and stewardship of public money and resources”
• “provide for public accountability”

The vote was 62-0, and according to KRQE — a local Albuquerque, New Mexico news station — the four committee members have already been appointed, and their first meeting is “on Tuesday Morning.”

Per the resolution, the committee is to “keep records of its work” and provide reports on the following schedule.

July 31, 2026 (or before): Interim report to House leadership

Dec 31, 2026 (or before): Final report to all House members, which is to include their “findings and conclusions”

The property was owned by Jeffrey Epstein for decades prior to his alleged “suicide” in 2019.

Donald Huffines and San Rafael

This comes days after a publication called the Santa Fe New Mexican published a widely-cited article with the headline, “Texas businessman running for office owns Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in Santa Fe County,” in which they reported:

The family of Texas businessman and politician Donald Huffines owns the late Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in southern Santa Fe County, which was purchased in 2023 by a limited liability company created just a month before the purchase.

Huffines, a former GOP state senator from Dallas, is now running a high-profile campaign for comptroller — a statewide office in Texas overseeing state financial matters.

Records obtained by The New Mexican also show the ranch has been renamed San Rafael Ranch and its address, formerly 49 Zorro Ranch Road, is now 49 Rancho San Rafael Road. The change was made in 2024.

Huffines’ campaign spokesperson Allen Blakemore said in a statement Friday:

Four years after Mr. Epstein’s death, the Huffines family purchased property in New Mexico listed at public auction whose proceeds benefited his victims. Prior to the auction listing, they had never visited the property.

According to The Texas Tribune:

In a follow-up statement Monday, Blakemore said the family had not been approached by any authorities to search the property but would cooperate should they be. The statement was released in the wake of calls from officials in New Mexico for federal and state authorities to open a probe after an email recently surfaced that two girls may be buried at the ranch or near it.

A report last week by the publication Source NM provided some insight into the “burial” allegations and the anonymous 2019 email:

New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard on Tuesday called on federal and state law enforcement to investigate allegations that two girls were buried in the hills surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch. 

The allegations are contained in an anonymous email that conservative talk show host and former Albuquerque mayoral candidate Eddy Aragon received in November 2019, several months after Epstein died in federal custody, and are part of the trove of recently released Epstein documents. 

The email came from an encrypted account from someone who claims to have been a former staff member at Zorro Ranch, the 7,500-acre property Epstein purchased from former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King in 1993, who had “been there and seen it all.”

The letter’s author says two “foreign girls” died of strangulation during “rough, fetish sex” and were later buried on “orders of Jeffrey and Madam G,” a potential reference to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former business partner currently serving a two-decade federal prison sentence for sex trafficking.

The letter does not say when the girls might have died or when or where they were buried, except that the burial site is “somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro.” The author also claims to have taken seven videos from Epstein’s home, including ones depicting sex with minors, as “insurance in case of future litigation against Epstein.”

The author offered to send the videos on a thumb drive to Aragon in exchange for 1 bitcoin, an untraceable digital currency, that would have been worth about $8,000 at the time. 

Aragon told Source New Mexico in a phone interview Tuesday that he forwarded the letter to the FBI right after receiving it and that he did not respond to the author or pay for the videos. 

“It felt very legitimate to me,” he said of the letter. “That’s why I forwarded it.”

He said he received assurances from the FBI at the time that investigators would tell him whether they investigated and what they found, but he never heard anything back. 

In addition to allegations that Epstein engaged in sexual abuse at the ranch, the New York Times reported in 2019 that it was the location where he hoped to “seed the human race with his DNA” by impregnating women.

“Mr. Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence,” the Times wrote. “Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.”

They went on later in the same article:

On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies, according to two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals, all of whom Mr. Epstein told about it.

It was not a secret. The adviser, for example, said he was told about the plans not only by Mr. Epstein, at a gathering at his Manhattan townhouse, but also by at least one prominent member of the business community. One of the scientists said Mr. Epstein divulged his idea in 2001 at a dinner at the same townhouse; the other recalled Mr. Epstein discussing it with him at a 2006 conference that he hosted in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

The idea struck all three as far-fetched and disturbing. There is no indication that it would have been against the law.

Once, at a dinner at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mr. Lanier said he talked to a scientist who told him that Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe. Mr. Lanier said the scientist identified herself as working at NASA, but he did not remember her name.

Don Huffines, meanwhile, said on Monday evening that he’s planning to turn the former Zorro ranch (now renamed San Rafael Ranch) into a “Christian retweet,” and that reports attempting to paint his ownership of the property as nefarious are “last-minute lies and dirty tricks” by his political opponents, writing on X:

In 2023, four years after Epstein’s death, San Rafael Ranch had been listed on the open market for years and was scheduled for public auction.

At the time of the sale, it was marketed that the proceeds would go to the victims. It has since been confirmed by the estate’s attorneys that proceeds from the sale benefited the victims.

What the enemy once meant for evil, God can redeem for good. That’s why we renamed the property San Rafael, after the saint associated with physical and spiritual healing, and began plans immediately to remake it as a Christian retreat, reclaiming it for Jesus. Even the new entrance will reflect that mission and will read, “BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO COME IN THE NAME OF THE LORD.”

By 2024, my family’s ownership was public and had been posted on social media.

We have always maintained an open line of communication with local authorities. No law enforcement agency has ever approached me to request access, and I have always said unequivocally that any such request would be met with immediate access and full cooperation.

This is what desperate political opponents do: last-minute lies and dirty tricks.

‘Dig Up The Ranch, Thomas’

Huffines has been active in Republican politics for years. He’s the founder of the Huffines Liberty Foundation, and has reportedly known libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul’s family since the 1990s. When Paul ran for President in 2015-2016, he tapped Huffines to chair his campaign.

As it turns out, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) — who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act and has been one of the most outspoken proponents of disclosure in Congress — also has a longstanding relationships with Huffines.

“I’ve known Don for many years,” Massie said in a video in January of 2022. “He’s a true fighter. He’s a defender of personal liberty and economic freedom. He’s exactly the kind of person Texas needs to lead them.”

While sharing the report on social media that month, Huffines thanked Massie for his support and called him a “good friend,” “champion of liberty,” and “fierce advocate for his constitutents in Congress.”

Thank you @MassieforKY for your support of my campaign!

I am honored to receive the endorsement from such a champion for liberty.

Representative Massie has been a good friend and a fierce advocate for his constituents in Congress. I am grateful for his support. pic.twitter.com/eQtwQLu4nd

— Don Huffines (@DonHuffines) January 28, 2022

As another example, the two were photographed together in early April 2024, and Huffines said while sharing the photo on X that it was “such a pleasure to host @RepThomasMassie in Dallas these last few days.”

“They need to dig up the ranch, Thomas,” one user said on Monday morning in response to a post Massie made about the Epstein files.

“Absolutely needs to be investigated,” Massie replied minutes later.