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.

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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. 

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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 part of, Krissoff said redactions usually came down to meticulous negotiations between the prosecution and the defense. Sometimes deliberations drilled into individual sentences or words.

"This situation is a little different because it's unclear, you know, who is still working on this from the original case team. And so, the question is: who at the Department of Justice reviewed these in connection with the redactions here?" Krissoff said.

She said whole case files rarely get released to the public beyond what shows up in court filings — and what’s there usually serves the narrow purposes of the prosecution. In Epstein’s case, the public’s interests extend beyond any potential conviction of Epstein himself. Epstein died in 2019 while incarcerated on suspicion of sex-trafficking minors. His death, ruled a suicide, cut short his prosecution and left behind questions about whether he facilitated illegal sexual encounters for his vast social network. 

Photos released by the DOJ last week lack context and do not, on their own, implicate anyone depicted in them of wrongdoing. 

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"The case file often implicates many other people that are not charged in the crimes. So, there may be 15 people charged in a drug ring. You've only charged one or two people; you don't want to impugn those other people who have not been charged by releasing information showing their involvement in this drug ring," Krissoff said.

"The last thing you want to do is put that neighbor's information or his name or even his statement out there," Krissoff said.

She believes that there’s a danger in forcing disclosure of an ongoing case simply because of great public interest and setting a precedent for that to become a regular occurrence. In her view, it could disrupt ongoing investigations of the future that draw intense public interest.

The DOJ said it will continue to release its documents on Epstein on a rolling basis. It has not announced when they expect to continue their release of the Epstein files.

Florida's Catholic bishops made an appeal on Monday for a pause in immigration enforcement for the Christmas holidays, but the White House said operations will continue.

The appeal to President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was issued by Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski and signed by seven other members of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"The border has been secured," Wenski wrote. "The initial work of identifying and removing dangerous criminals has been accomplished to a great degree. Over half a million people have been deported this year, and nearly two million more have voluntarily self-deported."

"At this point, the maximum enforcement approach of treating irregular immigrants en masse means that now many of these arrest operations inevitably sweep up numbers of people who are not criminals but just here to work," he continued. "It should be noted that a significant majority of those detained in Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal background."

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He noted that migrant sweeps sometimes include people with legal authorization to be in the U.S. and that surveys show Americans believe immigration enforcement operations are going too far.

"Eventually these cases may be resolved, but this takes many months causing great sorrow for their families … A climate of fear and anxiety is infecting not only the irregular migrant but also family members and neighbors who are legally in the country," Wenski said.

"Since these effects are part of enforcement operations, we request that the government pause apprehension and round-up activities during the Christmas season," he said. "Such a pause would show a decent regard for the humanity of these families. Now is not the time to be callous toward the suffering caused by immigration enforcement."

The White House did not directly address the appeal for a holiday pause, but did say that enforcement activities would be business as usual.

"President Trump was elected based on his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens. And he’s keeping that promise," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Wenski, like many other Catholic leaders, has been an outspoken advocate for treating illegal immigrants humanely.

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In September, he joined other Catholic leaders on a panel at Georgetown University criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown for splitting up families, inciting fear and upending church life.

Wenski also cited the contributions illegal immigrants make to the U.S. economy.

"If you ask people in agriculture, you ask in the service industry, you ask people in health care, you ask the people in the construction field, and they’ll tell you that some of their best workers are immigrants," Wenski said. "Enforcement is always going to be part of any immigration policy, but we have to rationalize it and humanize it."

Wenski has joined the "Knights on Bikes" ministry, an initiative led by the Knights of Columbus that brings attention to the spiritual needs of migrants held at immigration detention centers, including "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Florida Everglades. He recalled praying a rosary in the scorching heat outside its walls before receiving permission just days later to celebrate Mass inside the facility.

"The fact that we invite these detainees to pray, even in this very dehumanizing situation, is a way of emphasizing and invoking their dignity," he said.

Last month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a "special message" in which they slammed Trump's mass deportation agenda and the "vilification" of illegal immigrants, expressing concern over the fear and anxiety immigration raids are stoking in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care in detention centers.

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The special message was endorsed by Pope Leo XIV and Bishop Ronald Hicks, who the pontiff recently named as the next archbishop of New York, replacing conservative Cardinal Timothy Dolan as the leader of the country’s second-largest Catholic diocese. Dolan announced earlier this year he would resign upon turning 75, which is required by Catholic law.

"I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have," Leo said last month. "If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there’s a system of justice."

The pope has previously urged local bishops to speak out on social justice concerns and has suggested that people who support the "inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States" may not be pro-life.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.