Бывший генпрокурор Нью-Мексико отрицает близкие связи с Джеффри Эпштейном и призывает к реформам законодательства

Former New Mexico Attorney General Gary King says his ties to Jeffrey Epstein have been exaggerated — and that the legislative panel formed to investigate Epstein hasn’t reached out to hear his side of the story. King, 71, is perhaps the most prominent living New Mexico politician accused of having close ties to the late financier and convicted sex offender. The New Mexican reported in March that King — who was attorney general for eight years when Epstein owned a ranch in the state — had more contact with Epstein after Epstein’s guilty plea to a child sex crime than was previously known, based on emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year. King met Epstein for tea in Santa Fe in 2010, accepted campaign donations from Epstein’s companies in 2014 and flew on a private jet Epstein helped charter later that year while he was running for governor. Deb Haaland, the current Democratic gubernatorial nominee, was running for lieutenant governor then and was also on that Sept. 8, 2014, flight. King didn’t respond to several calls from two New Mexican reporters in February. However, in two phone interviews this week, King said he met Epstein only once, was unaware the 2014 donations — made under the names of Epstein’s companies — were from Epstein, and didn’t know he helped charter the private plane. “There is no information out there that you have or that anybody else has that I did him any favors, that I socialized with them, that we were friendly in any way,” King said. “There are people that are making up stuff about that out there, but none of it’s true. He wasn’t my friend.” King also defended the fact that as attorney general, he didn’t investigate Epstein following Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea to solicitation of prostitution with a minor in Florida — saying he hadn’t received any reports of criminal activity at the ranch or other tips. King was attorney general from 2007 to 2015. “I have freely admitted all along that we solicited campaign contributions from him, as we did from lots and lots of people, but I never ever did him any favors or looked the other way or did any of those kinds of things, based on either knowing him or receiving a campaign contribution from him,” King said. The New Mexico House of Representatives formed an investigative subcommittee in February to examine Epstein’s activities in the state, potential crimes that occurred at his Zorro Ranch and possible legislative fixes. Separately, the state Department of Justice is running a criminal investigation looking to charge individuals connected to Epstein’s crimes. Although King expected to be called to testify by the legislative truth commission by now, he hasn’t been. “Maybe they’re not really interested in the truth that much,” King said. “Certainly, nobody in the AG’s office has ever called me to talk to me about it. So no, nobody’s been interested.” A spokesperson said the commission “is following the evidence and acting upon our investigation in due course.” “While we will be calling on persons of interest directly, we also welcome additional sources and encourage government officials with relevant information to reach out to our Commission,” Pam Armstrong, responding to questions on behalf of the commission’s Democratic members Reps. Andrea Romero and Marianna Anaya, wrote in an email. Buying the ranch Epstein purchased the ranch he named Zorro in 1993 from Gary King’s father, former Gov. Bruce King, and his family — large landowners in the southern Santa Fe County area. As King heard it from his family members, Epstein was driving around looking for ranchland to buy around the Galisteo Basin when he saw a hilltop near Stanley, and asked his real estate agent who owned the land. “His real estate agent reached out to our family, and they made an offer to buy the land there,” King said. The sale offer was the first the family had ever heard of Epstein, he said. Epstein paid around $3 million for the property, King said, which records show amounted to around 7,600 privately deeded acres, not including leased public land. Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell said in an interview with the U.S. Department of Justice last year that Epstein cast a wide net in his search for property: The two of them visited Montana, Utah and then New Mexico, “and he just loved New Mexico,” she said. It was no surprise Epstein wanted the property, King said, rattling off the names of famous people that have purchased land in the Santa Fe area. King said his family had little connection to Epstein after the purchase. Over the years, King heard about workers attending church in Stanley, but he didn’t have any personal knowledge of Epstein’s activities there — Epstein would “come in and spend a few weeks, or something like that, and then leave,” as King understood it. Campaign for AG King remembers only a handful of phone calls with Epstein over the years — the first of which was in 2006 to solicit campaign donations. Epstein donated $15,000 to King’s campaign for attorney general, The New Mexican reported in 2006. King this week said he had reached out to “everybody … who might be interested in making a contribution.” “He was somebody who lived in the area and indeed, was a businessman. We reached out and solicited contributions from pretty much everybody that we knew,” King said. After Epstein’s 2006 arrest in Florida on accusations of soliciting sex from girls, King told The New Mexican he planned to return the money “to avoid any appearance of impropriety.” “I don’t think I’ve ever met him personally,” he said in 2006. “He knows other members of my family better.” King said this week he doesn’t remember saying he would return the funds: “I don’t recall ever returning any funds that he would have given in 2006,” he said. King won the election and took office in 2007. The following year, Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution in Florida in a deal widely criticized as lenient, after Florida police identified dozens of underage victims accusing Epstein of abuse. Epstein served 13 months in jail and was placed on house arrest in Florida until July 2010. Not long after Epstein’s house arrest ended, he decided to reach out to King for a meeting. A meeting over tea In King’s telling, Epstein reached out to arrange a meeting in August 2010 because he wanted to express his condolences for Bruce King, who died the year before. They ordered two pots of tea at Jinja Bar & Bistro, King said, and chatted about his father. “It seems to be sort of a human thing if somebody wants to express their condolences, to accept that,” King said. Asked whether he had concerns since Epstein had just come off his child sex crime sentence, King said as a former defense attorney he was acquainted with people who had been in jail. “[My] upbringing was such that I was taught to be polite and compassionate to every human being, and so I don’t perceive talking to Mr. Epstein to be anything other than being polite or compassionate,” he said. King said he doesn’t think Epstein and Bruce King kept in touch after the sale of the ranch, but his father was well known and respected, so he wasn’t surprised Epstein wanted to express his condolences. It’s possible Epstein appreciated being connected with the state’s political elite, King said, but his father had been out of office since 1995. “Maybe that was kind of part of his operational mode — to stay in touch with people that were well known and well connected, but of course my dad had been out of office … so it wasn’t like he was, you know, connected in any way that would have been helpful to Mr. Epstein by then,” King said. Asked whether it’s possible Epstein wanted to connect with King as attorney general, he said, “I don’t know that anybody ever perceived me as being particularly powerful, but yeah, if you look back at it over the course of time, it might be that he thought that being friendly to me was what might be beneficial to him at some point in the future. I can’t speak to that because I wasn’t inside his head.” King remembered at the Jinja meeting the two also talked about the Santa Fe Institute, where Epstein knew prominent Nobel laureate physicist Murray Gell-Mann. King, who trained as a chemist, was “interested in whether I might be able to meet this Nobel Prize winner” and curious about the institute in general. King “never got an introduction to anybody at the Santa Fe Institute from that,” he said. 2014 donations The next time the pair talked was when King ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2014, he said. While King now maintains he told Epstein not to donate, Epstein went on to contribute more than $35,000 to King in 2014, The New Mexican reported. “Please call Gary King...he looks very forward to speaking with you,” Epstein’s assistant wrote to him June 5. Later that day, on June 5, 2014, King wrote in an email to Epstein, “Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. It means a lot to have your friendship and support,” and directed him on how to contribute. King said it was likely his campaign staff who sent the follow-up email, which was a “standard letter” sent out to solicit donations. He said when Epstein reached out to him to donate and they spoke by phone that day, King actually rejected any contributions. “No person who’s running for office would want to be associated with or get campaign contributions from somebody who had been convicted of the crimes that Jeffrey had been convicted of,” he said. “When I told him that I wouldn’t accept the contribution, he basically hung up on me,” King said. Shortly after King and Epstein spoke by phone, Epstein and his attorney were corresponding about how best to donate to King. Epstein directed his staff to make a contribution to King’s campaign, but his longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, noted in a June 14 email that King’s platform included fighting “crimes against children.” “Do you risk additional news coverage regarding his accepting of your contributions?” Indyke wrote to Epstein, noting King’s campaign website promised to “strengthen New Mexico child-crime laws.” Epstein responded, “good catch. lets use co s or trusts.” Asked why Epstein would have donated after King told him not to, King said, “He didn’t donate. They are companies that he was affiliated with.” The money was donated to King’s campaign through several different U.S. Virgin Islands-based companies registered to Epstein’s address. Those donations, too, came under scrutiny after a Sept. 2014 report by The New Mexican traced the company’s addresses. King maintains he didn’t know the companies belonged to Epstein. “Whenever it came to my attention that we had received contributions from Epstein-affiliated organizations in 2014, then I instructed my campaign finance organization to either send those back or send them on to nonprofits in Santa Fe that were dealing with victims of domestic violence,” King said. Chartered plane The day before the news of Epstein’s 2014 donations to King appeared in print, King was flying to Washington with his staffers on a plane Epstein had helped charter. Epstein was not on the flight, but several emails detail his involvement in setting up the charter. “Please call Gary King when you have a moment,” Epstein’s assistant wrote to Epstein Aug. 21, in an email released by the U.S. Department of Justice. “He said he was returning your call but also wanted to speak to you about possibly using your plane to get him from Sante Fe evening of Sept 8th (around 8pm) so he could make a breakfast in DC on Sept 9th … he says he can pay for the fuel and landing/airport fees.” King in interviews this week said he never sought out Epstein’s assistance in arranging the flight and his name might have been used as “shorthand” for his campaign. King didn’t know Epstein helped arrange the flight, he said, and wonders if it was former Gov. Bill Richardson, who had arranged for King to meet with union leaders in D.C., who was responsible. Richardson, who was friends with Epstein for years, died in 2023. “One of my staff members said, ‘Well, I think that we got the information on where to lease the airplane from Bill Richardson,’ ” King said. “I think it’s more than possible that Bill Richardson might have called whoever he knew there and said, “Hey, Gary King needs an airplane to fly to D.C.’ … and people when you’re campaigning, people use your name for all kinds of stuff.” King’s campaign reported spending about $22,000 for the flight, which Epstein helped arrange through a company called InJet, federal files and a campaign finance report submitted by King show. Five passengers flew on the Sept. 8, 2014, charter flight, including Haaland, according to a flight information sheet. There is no evidence she was involved with setting up the flight or knew who helped arrange it; she has maintained she didn’t know about the Epstein connection. The only other contact King remembers was in Epstein’s later years, perhaps between 2014 and 2018, when Epstein called to complain the Santa Fe County sheriff was harassing his employees. “He felt like whenever his ranch foreman was driving to Santa Fe, that the county sheriff would stop him and ask him questions,” King said. King remembers telling him he’d need to take up the issue with the sheriff. No investigation King was attorney general at the time when Epstein’s crimes in Florida became well known, but he didn’t open an investigation. Why not? “I think that’s the salient question, and nobody’s really asked me that question, but the answer to that is that as a prosecutor, you need probable cause,” King said. “I don’t think that pleading guilty to a crime in another jurisdiction is probable cause to trigger an investigation.” King said he never received any information about potential crimes at the ranch. “If I had a tip, if I had if somebody had come to me during that time period and said, ‘We saw young girls going out to the Zorro Ranch,’ then we would have pursued it,” he said. Former Attorney General Hector Balderas, who assumed office in 2015, opened an investigation in 2019 into Epstein, which was ultimately suspended at the request of federal prosecutors. Balderas in a letter to the truth commission in July said he began investigating as a result of news reports, not complaints, and he didn’t inherit any case file on Epstein from prior administrations. He was, he wrote, “without any originating referrals or investigative leads.” “Despite the lack of an existing case file at the Office of the Attorney General, I was concerned that if Epstein had a residence in New Mexico, an investigation needed to be launched based on the public reporting alone,” Balderas wrote. The truth commission has said it plans to investigate whether there were missed opportunities to investigate Epstein in earlier years. King said he would be glad to talk to the truth commission not only about his experiences, but to provide advice on legislative reforms. “As the Attorney General, I had written and found a sponsor to carry my human trafficking laws. … My whole career has been working to help protect victims of domestic violence and victims of sexual assault,” he said. “It’s only been now that I’ve been out of office for 10 years that there are a group of people out there who feel like attacking my character is going to forward their political career, it’s going to get them more clicks,” he said.