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Investigative Body

The House Oversight Committee has released a batch of approximately 70 photos from the estate of former convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third such release from a tranche of over 95,000 photos the body has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It features images of passages from the novel Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and redacted images of female overseas passports.

This action occurs mere hours before the December 19th due date for the DOJ to release every files related to its probe into Epstein.

"These new photographs raise further questions about precisely what the Justice Department has in its holdings," stated the senior Democrat of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Released

Some of the photos published on Thursday depict Epstein speaking with academic and activist Noam Chomsky inside a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing next to a woman whose identity is censored; Steve Bannon positioned at a workstation opposite Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Investigative Body

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

Showing up in the photographs is not evidence of any illegal activity, and many of the pictured figures have stated they were in no way involved in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a press release issued alongside the photo publication, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not offer explanatory details or timings for the pictures.

"Images were selected to furnish the general populace with transparency into a illustrative selection of the photos received from the property, and to give perspectives into Epstein's network and his exceptionally disturbing activities," the release reads.

Oversight Panel

The publication also includes multiple photographs of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita written in black ink across different parts of a female's body, such as her upper body, feet, hipbone, and spine. Lolita tells the account of a adolescent who was exploited by a adult literature professor.

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

The release also contains a collection of photos of female travel documents and identification documents from countries worldwide, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

Most of the details on the documents, including identities and birth dates, is redacted but the committee said in a press release that the travel documents belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

A further image depicts Epstein sitting at a desk in close proximity surrounded by three women whose faces have been obscured - one has her palm on Epstein's torso under his garment, and another is bending to view a nearby laptop. Epstein seems to be helping the third attach a wristband.

Oversight Panel

A further photo disclosed is a capture of text messages from an unidentified individual who says they have been supplied "some girls" and are requesting "$1000 per girl".

Photograph Disclosure Occurs Ahead of DOJ Due Date

The body has thousands of images in its custody from the Epstein property, which are "simultaneously explicit and mundane," its press release on this week explained.

The oversight panel first subpoenaed the property of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and documents the Epstein estate gave to the body are separate from what is commonly referred to "Epstein-related records". Those are records under the DOJ's possession related to its independent inquiry into Epstein.

In accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed into law last month, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its records. The full nature of the contents included in the DOJ's documents is unknown, and it's likely that much of the information will be extensively censored, similar to the committee's documents