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Investigative Body

The House Oversight Committee has made public a collection of approximately 70 photos obtained from the property of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the third disclosure from a tranche of in excess of 95,000 images the panel has secured from Epstein's estate. It includes images of quotes from the book Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and obscured photos of women's foreign passports.

This disclosure comes hours before the December 19th cut-off for the DOJ to make public all documents connected to its investigation into Epstein.

"These photographs bring up additional inquiries about exactly what the Justice Department has in its holdings," stated the ranking member of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Images Disclosed

A number of the photos published on Thursday depict Epstein in discussion with academic and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private jet; Bill Gates standing next to a woman whose face is redacted; Steve Bannon seated at a workstation opposite Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Committee

These are the newest high-net-worth, powerful men to be seen in Epstein's estate images published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly released images also depict US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, previous US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Showing up in the photographs is does not constitute indication of any illegal activity, and a number of the featured men have said they were never implicated in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a press release accompanying the image publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not offer background information or dates for the photographs.

"Photos were picked to offer the general populace with clarity into a illustrative selection of the images obtained from the estate, and to provide understanding into Epstein's network and his extremely alarming actions," the announcement states.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also features multiple images of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in ink across various areas of a woman's body, such as her chest, foot, pelvis, and rear. Lolita recounts the tale of a young girl who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work inscribed across a female's chest says, "Lolita: the point of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a number of photographs of female passports and ID papers from states globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

Most of the data on the documents, like names and birth dates, is redacted but the panel said in a announcement that the passports are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

A further image features Epstein positioned at a desk closely surrounded by three individuals whose identities have been obscured - one individual has her palm on Epstein's upper body under his clothing, and a second is bending to look at a close-by laptop. Epstein seems to be aiding the final person put on a piece of jewelry.

Committee

Another photograph released is a screenshot of digital messages from an unidentified person who claims they have been provided "some girls" and are asking for "$one thousand dollars for each individual".

Image Publication Comes Prior to DOJ Deadline

The panel has many thousands of images in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "simultaneously disturbing and mundane," its press release on recently explained.

The Congressional committee first subpoenaed the property of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of human trafficking, in August.

The images and files the Epstein estate's representatives gave to the panel are different than what is commonly referred to "the Epstein documents". Those are documents under the Department of Justice's custody connected to its independent inquiry into Epstein.

Under the recently passed law, which President Trump enacted in November, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to release its documents. The full nature of what's included in the DOJ's records is unknown, and it's likely that a significant portion of the material will be extensively obscured, similar to the committee's materials