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Investigative Body

The House Oversight Committee has made public a collection of around 70 photographs secured from the holdings of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the latest in a series of disclosure from a tranche of more than 95,000 images the committee has secured from Epstein's holdings. It contains pictures of excerpts from the literary work Lolita written across a woman's body, and redacted photos of female international passports.

This action occurs just hours before the 19th of December cut-off for the DOJ to make public every files connected to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new photos raise further questions about what exactly the DOJ has in its possession," remarked the senior Democrat of the committee, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Images Disclosed

Several of the photos released on this week depict Epstein speaking with academic and activist Noam Chomsky on a personal aircraft; Bill Gates seen beside a female whose face is censored; Steve Bannon positioned at a desk opposite Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Committee

These are the most recent affluent, prominent figures to be pictured in Epstein estate photos published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly released pictures also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the images is not proof of any illegal activity, and many of the photographed men have said they were not implicated in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a press release accompanying the photograph publication, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not provide background information or timings for the images.

"Photos were selected to provide the public with clarity into a representative sample of the images acquired from the property, and to provide understanding into Epstein's associates and his extremely troubling behavior," the statement reads.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also contains a number of photographs of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in black ink across different parts of a female's body, including her chest, lower extremity, hipbone, and rear. Lolita recounts the tale of a minor who was manipulated by a adult literature professor.

One passage from the work scrawled across a woman's torso reads, "Lo-lee-ta: the end of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a collection of photographs of female travel documents and identification documents from countries around the world, such as Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

The majority of the details on the IDs, like names and dates of birth, is obscured but the panel said in a press release that the passports pertain to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".

A further photograph features Epstein seated at a workstation intimately surrounded by three female figures whose faces have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's chest under his garment, and another is crouching to look at a close-by device. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third put on a wristband.

Oversight Panel

An additional photograph made public is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unnamed individual who states they have been sent "a number of girls" and are asking for "$$1,000 for each individual".

Photo Release Occurs Prior to DOJ Cut-off

The committee has thousands of photographs in its custody from the Epstein holdings, which are "both explicit and ordinary," its statement on this week noted.

The House Oversight Committee first subpoenaed the estate of Epstein, who passed away in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The images and files the Epstein estate submitted to the body are different than what is often called "the Epstein files". Those files are records in the justice department's possession associated with its own inquiry into Epstein.

Under the Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law last month, the DOJ has until 19 December to publish its records. The full nature of the contents found in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's probable that much of the material will be extensively obscured, comparable to Congressional documents