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Oversight Panel

The House Oversight Committee has released a collection of around 70 images from the estate of former convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the third release from a tranche of over 95,000 photos the panel has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It features images of passages from the literary work Lolita written across a female's body, and obscured images of female international passports.

This action occurs just hours before the 19 December deadline for the Justice Department to make public every files associated with its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new photographs bring up more queries about exactly what the Justice Department has in its possession," said the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Photos Released

Several of the photos released on Thursday show Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a private jet; Bill Gates standing beside a female whose features is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Investigative Body

These are the most recent wealthy, prominent figures to be pictured in Epstein estate images disclosed by the House Oversight Committee - previously disclosed photos also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, previous US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

Showing up in the photos is is not considered evidence of any illegal activity, and a number of the featured men have said they were never implicated in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a press release released with the photograph release, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate's representatives did not supply background information or timeframes for the photographs.

"Images were picked to provide the public with transparency into a typical cross-section of the photographs acquired from the property, and to give insights into Epstein's associates and his extremely alarming activities," the release reads.

Oversight Panel

The release also features a number of photographs of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in ink across various areas of a woman's body, such as her torso, foot, pelvis, and rear. Lolita recounts the tale of a young girl who was groomed by a older literature professor.

An example of a passage from the book written across a woman's torso says, "Lolita: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a number of images of female identification and ID papers from states around the world, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

The majority of the details on the IDs, including identities and birth dates, is redacted but the panel indicated in a press release that the passports belong to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

Another photograph shows Epstein positioned at a table intimately surrounded by three female figures whose faces have been censored - one has her hand on Epstein's chest under his clothing, and another is crouching to look at a adjacent computer. Epstein appears to be aiding the third attach a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

An additional photograph disclosed is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unidentified individual who states they have been supplied "some girls" and are demanding "$1000 for each individual".

Photograph Disclosure Arrives Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The committee has many thousands of photos in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "at once graphic and ordinary," its statement on Thursday clarified.

The Congressional committee first subpoenaed the holdings of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York correctional facility in 2019 while facing trial on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and files the Epstein estate provided to the committee are different than what is commonly referred to "the Epstein files". Those are records under the Department of Justice's custody connected to its separate investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Transparency Act, which Donald Trump made law in November, the DOJ has until 19 December to release its documents. The full nature of the contents contained in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's likely that a large amount of the content will be significantly obscured, comparable to Congressional documents