Top New Mexico Senate Republican calls on Rep. Romero to resign from Epstein commission, House seat

New Mexico Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer (R-Farmington) on Thursday called on the state lawmaker leading the state’s commission dedicated to investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s activities in New Mexico to resign.

Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), a licensed attorney, has come under increasing scrutiny after Republicans in the state Legislature called for an ethics investigation into whether she was breaking state law by holding a part-time job with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office. While Romero had previously said that she obtained permission to take the job, Attorney General Raúl Torrez earlier this week said that she relied on a 2024 opinion from his office that was “read more broadly than intended.”

The 2024 opinion concerned whether state Rep. Andrea Reeb (R-Clovis) could work as a special prosecutor in the state’s case against actor Alec Baldwin. While it found she was allowed to do so, she left the job after Baldwin’s attorneys argued it was unconstitutional for a sitting lawmaker to work as a special prosecutor. Reeb currently also serves on the Legislature’s special Epstein investigatory subcommittee.

Romero resigned from her job with the local prosecutor’s office earlier this week. In a statement issued via a New York-based public relations firm that holds a contract with the Epstein “truth commission,” Romero defended her employment there and accused Torrez of seeking to disrupt the commission’s work.

Sharer, on Thursday, criticized Romero for issuing that statement to the press via the Epstein commission’s contracted communications firm. According to the Legislature’s website, that contract with New York-based Dini von Mueffling Communications began on Aug. 11, via the Legislative Council Service, and has a cap of $60,000.

“The evidence suggests she used taxpayer dollars appropriated for a truth commission investigating one of the most notorious predators in modern history to instead pay a contractor to clean up her own political mess,” Sharer said. “That is not what that money was for, and it is exactly the kind of self-dealing New Mexico’s Governmental Conduct Act was written to stop.”

Sharer added that he has asked the State Ethics Commission to investigate.

In a statement provided late Thursday by a spokesperson for the House Democrats, Romero said she had “mistakenly” approved a draft statement that the communications firm issued on her behalf without the rest of the commission members’ approval, which the commission’s internal process, she said, requires.

“This was unintentional and I sincerely apologize for the confusion created. I have been on leave out of the country, taking time to grieve the loss of a dear loved one, which has made communicating on this issue logistically challenging.”

Romero also said as a result, the commission and the PR firm “are parting ways, but the important work of our Commission will continue in the best interest of survivors.”

Romero’s statement also appeared to backtrack criticisms she levied earlier this week at Torrez following his letter to DAs, in which she said, she was “deeply disappointed” by the letter and saw it as “an attempt to disrupt the work of our Survivor Truth Commission that seeks justice for the many young people who were harmed by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-collaborators in our state.”

In her statement Thursday, Romero reiterated that she had resigned from her position.

“I acknowledge and support the AG’s decision and encourage any other lawmakers in the same position to follow this guidance,” she said. “I look forward to putting all of this behind me and focusing on serving the people of my district.”