The Owner of Zorro Ranch is Revealed - And His Kid Works at the White House

After months of research into deeds and property records, this week most of us discovered the true owner of Zorro Ranch, purchased after the death of global sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. Originally listed under the ownership of San Rafael Ranch LLC, a recent renaming of roads around the property led to the revelation of its true owner, MAGA millionaire and Texas comptroller candidate, Don Huffines.

Prior to purchasing the property at auction (for an undisclosed amount) in 2023, Huffines ran for Governor of Texas as a Tea Party Republican, focusing on individual rights, fiscal restraint, personal responsibility, limited government, and social conservativism. He was known for writing op-eds in the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News, focusing on property taxes, and he fervently disagreed with Greg Abbott’s policies on the COVID-19 lockdowns and low-grade promotion of transgender policies for Texas Youth. He thought Abbott’s point of view was far too liberal, and used the story of Riley Gaines—a former college swimmer who has advocated against transgender athletes in sports—as part of his campaign, along with eliminating property taxes, shutting down the border, and ending abortion.

Huffines founded the Huffines Liberty Foundation, a conservative thinktank that focuses on “liberty, prosperity, and virtue,” and reflects the values of the Heritage Foundation, creators of Project 2025. The Huffines Foundation helps push conservative ideologies into the political arena, including the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortions after the detection of a heartbeat at about 6 weeks, Constitutional Carry, and bills concerning “abusive transgender transitioning” for children.

Huffines lost his bid for Governor, but during his campaign he worked with a member of his staff, Jake Lloyd Colglazier, who has ties to InfoWars and the white nationalist movement. Colglazier, who once said “we’re nearing the demographic cliff” in reference to the increase of people of color entering politics and power, has spent most of his career mocking non-white people. On his livestream, he pointed to an Asian woman, saying she needed to be in China “getting the shit beat out of her by her husband.” Elsewhere he posted “I spit on George Floyd.” An original member of the Groyper movement, Colglazier has interviewed white supremacists like Vincent James Foxx, who participated in the January 6th insurrection, and Faith Goldy, who was fired from The Rebel Media for going on a podcast for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.

Huffines refused to remove Colglazier as a member of his staff, despite multiple sources of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and connections to people like Alex Jones and alt-right nationalists like Nick Fuentes.

“If I were to go through the social media history of any young Texan I would find something I disagree with. My campaign will not participate in cancel culture.” - Don Huffines

Two years after Huffines purchased Zorro Ranch, now under intense scrutiny by the American public for a long-overdue investigation, his son Russell Huffines accepted a position as Associate Director of Agency Outreach in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs. This allowed the younger Huffines to work within the Executive Office of the President, coordinating interactions between the White House and federal agencies.

Russell Huffines, who uses his social media to promote ideas like the SAVE Act—which makes it more difficult for rural voters and married women (who have changed their names) to do in-person voting—tougher border policies, and TrumpRx.gov, has made clear his devotion to his father and his father’s policies, which align with MAGA. He is very transparent about his lack of support for Ukraine, and wants birthright citizenship abolished.

There is no indication that either of the Huffines are in the Epstein Files, nor if they have a close relationship with Donald Trump. However, after nearly 30 years of silence, Zorro Ranch has yet to be investigated for the crimes of Trump’s former best friend, which included visits from and alleged abuses by former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who passed away around the time of Huffines’ purchase of the ranch. Epstein’s biggest property, at nearly 8000 acres, Zorro was a West-Coast launchpad for big names like former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Deepak Chopra, Tom Pritzker, Noam Chomsky, Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Brunel, among others. Countless girls were abused there, like Annie Farmer and the unknown author of a recently discovered coded journal that documented the horrors of teenagers giving birth to Epstein’s children before watching their babies disappear with a man known only as “Mr. M.”

The Unknown Survivor’s Journal

There are also rumors of Eastern European girls who died on the property, without identification, no one looking for them, a side effect of being a “little too rough.” Ehud Barak liked to choke girls until they passed out, waiting for them to come to and doing it all over again. It wasn’t unlikely that a girl might be too far gone and had to disappear among the scrub grass and succulents. We would never know, and their parents across the world might never ask, too afraid to admit they’d sold their daughters into slavery for the chance at the “American dream.”

No one has ever done a full search of Zorro Ranch, especially not with cadaver dogs along the full perimeter of the property. Now that we know that Don Huffines is the owner of the ranch, I would call on Congress to reach out and press for an intense search of the grounds, using any resources available to look for evidence of crimes, including sexual trafficking, racketeering, kidnapping, and murder. Until then, citizens and independent journalists will continue to dig through the files, looking for clues in order to bring justice to the survivors.

If you would like to dig through the files and help this investigation, you can do that here:

To call your Congressperson and demand accountability and a full search of Zorro Ranch, click here.

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.