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Investigative Body

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a collection of roughly 70 photographs obtained from the property of former found guilty sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the third release from a larger collection of over 95,000 photos the panel has secured from Epstein's property. It contains pictures of excerpts from the book Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and censored pictures of women's international passports.

This disclosure arrives hours before the December 19th due date for the Department of Justice to release every records connected to its probe into Epstein.

"These latest photographs pose further inquiries about what exactly the Justice Department has in its possession," remarked the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Images Made Public

Some of the photos published on this week feature Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates standing alongside a woman whose identity is redacted; Steve Bannon positioned at a desk across from Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Committee

These are the newest wealthy, powerful individuals to be photographed in Epstein property photographs released by the oversight panel - earlier published pictures also depict US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

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

In a statement released with the image publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein estate's representatives did not supply background information or dates for the images.

"Images were chosen to provide the general populace with openness into a illustrative selection of the photographs obtained from the property, and to offer perspectives into Epstein's associates and his extremely alarming behavior," the statement states.

Investigative Body

The disclosure also includes a number of photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita written in ink across several locations of a female's body, including her upper body, foot, hip, and back. Lolita narrates the story of a young girl who was manipulated by a older literature professor.

A particular quote from the novel scrawled across a female's upper body says, "Lo-lee-ta: the end of the tongue traveling of three steps down the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a number of images of women's identification and identification documents from nations globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

The majority of the information on the IDs, like names and birth dates, is censored but the House Oversight Committee indicated in a announcement that the travel documents pertain to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".

A further photo shows Epstein seated at a table closely surrounded by three female figures whose faces have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's chest under his shirt, and another is leaning to look at a adjacent laptop. Epstein can be seen to be aiding the final person fasten a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

Another image released is a screenshot of digital messages from an unnamed person who claims they have been supplied "several females" and are requesting "$$1,000 per girl".

Photo Release Occurs Before DOJ Cut-off

The committee has many thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein property, which are "both graphic and ordinary," its announcement on Thursday noted.

The Congressional committee first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and records the Epstein estate gave to the panel are distinct from what is often referred to "the Epstein documents". Those are records under the DOJ's control connected to its independent probe into Epstein.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump made law in November, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to disclose its files. The scope of what's contained in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's probable that a significant portion of the content will be extensively obscured, similar to the committee's materials