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Committee

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a collection of around 70 photographs obtained from the property of deceased found guilty sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third release from a larger collection of in excess of 95,000 photographs the body has acquired from Epstein's property. It includes photographs of passages from the novel Lolita written across a woman's body, and obscured pictures of female international passports.

This disclosure arrives mere hours before the 19 December cut-off for the DOJ to make public all files connected to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These images bring up further questions about exactly what the DOJ has in its holdings," stated the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photos Disclosed

Some of the photos released on this week show Epstein speaking with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky inside a private jet; Bill Gates positioned beside a female whose identity is redacted; Steve Bannon sitting at a workstation opposite Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Committee

These are the latest affluent, influential men to be pictured in Epstein property photographs disclosed by the House Oversight Committee - previously disclosed pictures also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, previous US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Showing up in the photographs is does not constitute proof of any illegal activity, and many of the pictured individuals have stated they were not participating in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a statement accompanying the image disclosure, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not offer explanatory details or timeframes for the photographs.

"Photographs were chosen to offer the American people with openness into a representative sample of the images acquired from the estate, and to give insights into Epstein's circle and his exceptionally disturbing behavior," the release states.

Committee

The release also features several photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita penned in dark ink across different parts of a woman's body, like her chest, feet, hip, and rear. Lolita recounts the tale of a adolescent who was groomed by a middle-aged literature professor.

A particular excerpt from the work scrawled across a woman's torso says, "Lolita: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the mouth to land, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a collection of photographs of female identification and official papers from nations around the world, such as Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

The majority of the information on the documents, like names and birth dates, is redacted but the panel said in a announcement that the travel documents belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were interacting with".

Another photo features Epstein seated at a table in close proximity in the company of three female figures whose faces have been obscured - one has her hand on Epstein's torso under his garment, and another individual is crouching to look at a adjacent laptop. Epstein appears to be aiding the final person fasten a bracelet.

Investigative Body

A further photograph made public is a image of text messages from an unnamed sender who says they have been provided "several females" and are demanding "$one thousand dollars per girl".

Photo Disclosure Occurs Before DOJ Deadline

The committee has many thousands of images in its holdings from the Epstein property, which are "at once graphic and everyday," its press release on recently explained.

The Congressional committee first legally compelled the property of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The photos and documents the Epstein property provided to the body are different than what is often referred to "the Epstein documents". That material are records in the DOJ's custody related to its own inquiry into Epstein.

In accordance with the Transparency Act, which the President enacted in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its documents. The scope of what's found in the DOJ's documents is not publicly known, and it's likely that a large amount of the material will be extensively obscured, akin to House Oversight Committee materials