New Mexico House Speaker Martínez won’t fill vacant seat on Epstein ‘Truth Commission’

New Mexico Speaker of the House Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) will not fill a vacant seat on the investigatory subcommittee dedicated to investigating the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s time in New Mexico.

Former Rep. Andrea Reeb (R-Clovis) resigned from her job as a state lawmaker, and from the bipartisan subcommittee known as the “Truth Commission,” earlier in October after a judge ruled that her role as a lawmaker conflicted with her work as a special prosecutor in the involuntary manslaughter case against actor Alec Baldwin.

The Legislature established the committee in this year’s lawmaking session and charged it with producing two investigative reports — one over the summer and one by the end of the year.

In a statement Friday, Camille Ward, a spokesperson for Martínez, noted the end-of-year deadline and said its remaining work does not require any changes to its existing membership.

“As the Commission works with legal counsel to conclude the investigation and finalize their report, there are no remaining votes to be taken and therefore there is no need for further changes to the Commission’s membership in these final weeks,” she said. “We fully expect the Commission to fulfill their promise to the people of New Mexico and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific abuse by delivering a final report to the public in December that meaningfully addresses the unanswered questions about what happened at Zorro Ranch.”

As the deadline for the commission’s final investigative report approaches, it is left with just three members; Reps. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), Marianna Anaya (D-Albuquerque) and William “Bill” Hall (R-Aztec).

When commissioners unveiled their first report in August, they acknowledged that it did little to tread new ground regarding Epstein and his crimes, but said that it condensed what’s known about his time in the state into a single document.

Infighting quickly characterized the commission as its Republican members accused Romero and Anaya of omitting references to Deb Haaland, the former U.S. Interior secretary and current Democratic nominee for New Mexico governor. Ahead of the June primary election, campaign ads accused Haaland of flying on an Epstein-owned jet in 2014, when she was running on former state Attorney General Gary King’s gubernatorial ticket as a candidate for lieutenant governor. However, publicly available documents show that the plane did not belong to Epstein and that King had requested Epstein’s help in chartering a flight.

Republican leaders subsequently called on Romero, the commission’s chair, to resign, alleging that she inappropriately worked for the local district attorney’s office while serving as a state lawmaker. Romero resigned from her job with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office but continued to serve as commission chair.

Reeb’s resignation sparked a volley of criticism between Democratic and Republican state House leaders, with New Mexico House Democrats saying Reeb and House Republicans should apologize to Romero, noting Reeb did not acknowledge her own potential conflict of interest when Romero resigned.

In response, House Republican Leader Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena) issued a lengthy statement in which she rejected Martínez’s call for an apology and said he should issue an apology “to every New Mexican and to the victims this commission was supposed to serve.”

Armstrong, in a Friday statement regarding Martínez’s decision to not replace Reeb, said she is “deeply disappointed in how this commission has been handled” and called on him to appoint a replacement.

“Chair Romero’s conduct has compromised the process, and rather than correct it, Speaker Martínez is now declining to follow the very resolution the House passed unanimously,” she said, adding that the resolution that authorized the commission specifies that it is supposed to be a four-member body. “With one seat left vacant, the commission is no longer balanced. How can New Mexicans trust the final report to reflect the truth, rather than the interests of the people writing it?”

Armstrong said balance among commission members is particularly important as Epstein “operated here for decades among the state’s political elite.”