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Oversight Panel

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

This constitutes the third such disclosure from a larger collection of in excess of 95,000 photos the committee has obtained from Epstein's estate. It includes images of passages from the book Lolita inscribed across a woman's body, and redacted images of female overseas passports.

This action arrives just hours before the 19 December deadline for the Justice Department to release every files related to its investigation into Epstein.

"These new images bring up additional queries about precisely what the Justice Department has in its custody," remarked the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Images Made Public

A number of the photos published on Thursday depict Epstein in discussion with academic and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates standing beside a woman whose identity is obscured; Steve Bannon positioned at a workstation across from Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Oversight Panel

These are the newest affluent, prominent figures to be photographed in Epstein's estate photos published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly published pictures also depict US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, previous US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the images is is not considered indication of any wrongdoing, and many of the pictured men have said they were never participating in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a statement issued alongside the photograph publication, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate's representatives did not offer background information or timeframes for the pictures.

"Photos were selected to provide the public with clarity into a representative sample of the images received from the estate, and to give understanding into Epstein's associates and his profoundly disturbing behavior," the release reads.

Oversight Panel

The publication also includes multiple photographs of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in ink across different parts of a woman's body, including her torso, foot, hipbone, and back. Lolita recounts the story of a minor who was exploited by a older literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work inscribed across a female's chest states, "Lolita's name: the end of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to alight, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a series of photos of female identification and identification documents from countries globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

A large portion of the information on the documents, such as identities and birth dates, is obscured but the committee stated in a statement that the passports pertain to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

An additional photo shows Epstein positioned at a desk closely surrounded by three female figures whose faces have been obscured - a first has her palm on Epstein's upper body under his clothing, and another individual is crouching to view a adjacent computer. Epstein can be seen to be assisting the third fasten a bracelet.

Investigative Body

A further image disclosed is a screenshot of text messages from an unidentified individual who claims they have been supplied "several females" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars per female".

Image Publication Occurs Prior to DOJ Cut-off

The panel has a vast number of images in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "both explicit and ordinary," its statement on this week explained.

The Congressional committee first subpoenaed the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and documents the Epstein property submitted to the body are different than what is often termed "Epstein-related records". Those are papers under the DOJ's possession related to its own probe into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law last month, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to disclose its documents. The full nature of what's contained in the DOJ's documents is not publicly known, and it's likely that a significant portion of the information will be extensively obscured, comparable to Congressional documents