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Committee

The House investigative committee has released a collection of around 70 images obtained from the property of late convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the third such disclosure from a cache of in excess of 95,000 images the body has secured from Epstein's estate. It contains pictures of passages from the literary work Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and redacted pictures of women's foreign passports.

This action comes hours before the December 19th cut-off for the Justice Department to disclose every records related to its probe into Epstein.

"These new photos pose more inquiries about precisely what the DOJ has in its possession," stated the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Photos Released

A number of the images published on this week depict Epstein speaking with academic and activist Noam Chomsky on a private plane; Bill Gates standing next to a female whose face is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a workstation opposite Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Oversight Panel

These are the newest high-net-worth, powerful figures to be pictured in Epstein property photographs disclosed by the oversight panel - formerly published photos also show US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, previous US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

Showing up in the photographs is not evidence of any wrongdoing, and many of the pictured men have stated they were not participating in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a press release issued alongside the photo publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate's representatives did not provide background information or timeframes for the images.

"Images were picked to furnish the general populace with transparency into a typical cross-section of the images obtained from the estate, and to provide perspectives into Epstein's associates and his exceptionally disturbing behavior," the statement says.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also features a number of photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita written in dark ink across several locations of a woman's body, including her torso, foot, pelvis, and back. Lolita narrates the account of a young girl who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

An example of a excerpt from the book inscribed across a female's upper body says, "Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a series of photographs of female travel documents and ID papers from countries globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

A large portion of the information on the IDs, such as names and birth dates, is redacted but the House Oversight Committee said in a statement that the travel documents belong to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

Another photo features Epstein sitting at a workstation in close proximity flanked by three individuals whose identities have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his clothing, and a second is crouching to look at a adjacent computer. Epstein seems to be assisting the final person put on a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

An additional image disclosed is a screenshot of digital messages from an unknown individual who states they have been provided "several females" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars per female".

Photo Publication Comes Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The committee has thousands of photographs in its custody from the Epstein holdings, which are "both explicit and mundane," its statement on Thursday clarified.

The Congressional committee first issued a subpoena to the property of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking, in August.

The photos and files the Epstein estate submitted to the panel are separate from what is largely called "the Epstein files". Those are papers under the Department of Justice's custody connected to its own probe into Epstein.

In accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the President signed into law in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its files. The extent of what's found in the DOJ's documents is unknown, and it's probable that a significant portion of the content will be significantly redacted, comparable to the committee's releases