Ex-federal prosecutor says DOJ had power to release all Epstein files

Former federal prosecutor describes redaction process for DOJ investigations Sarah Krissoff said the Epstein files fall outside the regular review process that would normally determine what can be released to the public and what must remain in the dark. If the Department of Justice (DOJ) wanted to release every Jeffrey Epstein-related document they had on file, they had the firepower to do so, a former assistant U.S. attorney argued. The DOJ has faced bipartisan criticism over its initial release of heavily redacted Epstein files, which lawmakers argue fell short of the requirements of a recently passed transparency law. "The Department of Justice has all the resources in the world, right? I mean if they wanted to put 1,000 lawyers on this to review the documents and get them ready for the production, they could have," Sarah Krissoff said. "And they don’t appear to have done that," she added. CLINTON TEAM DEMANDS TRUMP DOJ RELEASE 'ANY REMAINING' DOCS RELATED TO FORMER PRESIDENT, EPSTEIN Sarah Krissoff, a former U.S. prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, pictured next to a frame of Jeffrey Epstein. (Fox News; U.S. Justice Department/Anadolu via Getty Images) The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Krissoff, who worked as a prosecutor for almost 14 years in the Southern District of New York, described key differences between the Epstein files and the normal redaction process that attorneys grapple with. Those distinctions make it unclear who would have had final say about the information the DOJ released on Friday as the agency attempted to follow through on the requirements laid out by the Epstein Files Transparency Act. That law, passed by Congress last month and signed by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19, gave the DOJ just 30 days to make its documentation of Epstein public. It included some exceptions for protecting the identity of victims. Despite the thousands of files that became publicly available at the end of last week, the DOJ’s first trove sparked criticism from some lawmakers and viewers online outraged that the department hadn’t released them all at once. "They are hiding a lot of documents. That would be very helpful in our investigation," Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., a member of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN on Monday morning. SCHUMER ACCUSES DOJ OF BREAKING THE LAW OVER REDACTED EPSTEIN FILES The Department of Justice released a trove of Epstein documents on Dec. 19, following President Trump's signature on the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November. (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) Although she remains skeptical of the department’s effort, Krissoff noted that what the DOJ’s been asked to do goes far outside the norm for disclosures. "There is no real mechanism in the law that the public can just access documents because they're interested in them, right? In this case, this law is requiring the DOJ to make these things public because so many members of Congress are interested in this issue," Krissoff said. In the cases she’s been a...

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