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Investigative Body

The House investigative committee has made public a set of roughly 70 images obtained from the property of late adjudicated individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the latest in a series of release from a tranche of in excess of 95,000 photographs the panel has secured from Epstein's holdings. It includes photographs of excerpts from the book Lolita written across a woman's body, and censored images of female international passports.

This release arrives hours before the December 19th cut-off for the DOJ to release each files associated with its inquiry into Epstein.

"These latest photographs raise more queries about precisely what the Justice Department has in its holdings," stated the senior Democrat of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Images Disclosed

A number of the images released on this week show Epstein speaking with professor and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates standing alongside a female whose identity is redacted; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk across from Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Oversight Panel

These are the latest affluent, powerful figures to be photographed in Epstein property images disclosed by the committee - earlier released pictures also include US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

Showing up in the photos is is not considered proof of any misconduct, and several of the pictured figures have said they were in no way involved in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a press release released with the photo publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not provide background information or timeframes for the photographs.

"Images were picked to provide the public with openness into a illustrative selection of the photographs received from the holdings, and to give perspectives into Epstein's network and his extremely troubling behavior," the announcement states.

Investigative Body

The release also contains multiple images of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita penned in black ink across several locations of a female's body, such as her torso, lower extremity, hipbone, and back. Lolita narrates the account of a young girl who was groomed by a older literature professor.

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

There are also a collection of images of women's passports and ID papers from nations around the world, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

A large portion of the data on the IDs, including names and birth dates, is obscured but the committee stated in a statement that the travel documents are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

An additional image features Epstein sitting at a workstation in close proximity in the company of three female figures whose faces have been censored - a first has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his shirt, and a second is bending to view a adjacent computer. Epstein appears to be helping the third individual put on a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

A further photo made public is a capture of SMS messages from an unnamed person who states they have been provided "several females" and are demanding "$1000 per girl".

Image Publication Occurs Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The committee has a vast number of photos in its holdings from the Epstein property, which are "simultaneously disturbing and mundane," its announcement on Thursday explained.

The House Oversight Committee first subpoenaed the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of human trafficking, in August.

The photos and records the Epstein property gave to the panel are separate from what is often referred to "the Epstein files". Those files are papers under the DOJ's possession associated with its own inquiry into Epstein.

Under the Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law last month, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to publish its documents. The extent of what's contained in the DOJ's files is unclear, and it's expected that a large amount of the information will be extensively obscured, akin to the committee's releases