House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Fox News that Donald Trump’s Justice Department scuttled a state investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch during his first presidency.
The ranch has come under renewed scrutiny by state officials in New Mexico because of an unverified allegation in the Epstein files that the now-deceased sex offender had bodies buried nearby. The state’s Justice Department searched the ranch on Tuesday. The late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre alleged in her memoir that she met politicians and CEOs at the ranch. Epstein also reportedly had plans to use the ranch in a eugenics-inspired plot to “seed” the world with his DNA (though there’s no evidence he followed through).
Comer made his comments on Tuesday during a rant to host Jesse Watters about what he essentially framed as a government coverup.
“I’m glad that the New Mexico authorities are going there and searching that property,” Comer said, noting that without a search, there would always be questions about whether “deaths” or “mysterious surgeries” occurred there.
Then he took aim at the DOJ:
I do know this: The federal government asked New Mexico to stop their investigation — I believe, back in 2019 — of that ranch. So there’s just so many questions about how the government failed the victims and how government failed in trying to prosecute Epstein sooner. I mean, this whole thing doesn’t make sense. Everyone has conspiracy theories on how Epstein was able to get away with it. Was it because he had powerful friends? Was it because he was an agent? We don’t know, but we’re gonna find out and I’m glad that they’re on the ground now in New Mexico searching that property.
Rather conveniently, Comer made no mention of who was president in 2019: Donald Trump. Nor did he mention that Trump appointee Bill Barr was leading the Department of Justice when this purported chicanery took place.
People online were eager to note that what Comer suggested sounded mighty close to an alleged cover-up.
This week, Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts spoke at an International Women’s Day march outside the ranch, where he accused the federal government of engaging in a cover-up by withholding documents from the public.
Last month, the Santa Fe New Mexican cited an email from the Epstein files that suggested the federal government hadn’t searched the ranch as of December 2019, four months after Epstein’s death. State officials are cited in that report expressing frustration about the pace of probes into the ranch.
When Watters asked which branch of government gave New Mexico officials the alleged stand-down order, Comer doubled down on his accusations:
It was the Department of Justice, I believe. And I believe it was because they had — I believe it, perhaps, was Southern District of New York because they had taken over the investigation at that point. So, again these are questions that we have. We want to get the answers.
It seems there are plenty of questions to be asked about how the federal government handled, or potentially mishandled, investigations into Epstein’s activities at the New Mexico ranch. That the oversight chairman’s allegations of a government cover-up seem to overlook Trump and his handpicked attorney general at the time is too glaring to ignore.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.