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Oversight Panel

The House investigative committee has released a collection of approximately 70 photos obtained from the property of late found guilty sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the third such release from a cache of over 95,000 images the body has secured from Epstein's holdings. It features images of excerpts from the literary work Lolita written across a female's body, and censored pictures of female overseas passports.

This action arrives mere hours before the 19 December cut-off for the Justice Department to disclose all documents connected to its investigation into Epstein.

"These photographs bring up additional questions about exactly what the Justice Department has in its custody," said the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photos Released

Several of the images published on recently depict Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky inside a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing beside a individual whose identity is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk opposite Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Investigative Body

These are the most recent affluent, prominent men to be photographed in Epstein estate images disclosed by the oversight panel - earlier published photos also include US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

Showing up in the photographs is not proof of any wrongdoing, and several of the pictured men have said they were not implicated in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a statement accompanying the image publication, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate did not supply context or timeframes for the images.

"Photos were selected to offer the public with transparency into a representative sample of the images acquired from the holdings, and to provide understanding into Epstein's associates and his extremely disturbing behavior," the statement says.

Committee

The release also includes a number of photos of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita written in ink across various areas of a woman's body, including her upper body, feet, hip, and rear. Lolita recounts the story of a minor who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

One excerpt from the work scrawled across a woman's torso states, "Lo-lee-ta: the point of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the mouth to alight, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a series of images of female travel documents and official papers from states worldwide, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

Most of the information on the papers, including identities and birth dates, is censored but the committee said in a statement that the travel documents are associated with "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".

A further photo features Epstein sitting at a table closely in the company of three female figures whose features have been obscured - one individual has her palm on Epstein's chest under his shirt, and a second is leaning to view a nearby computer. Epstein can be seen to be assisting the final person put on a bracelet.

Committee

A further photograph released is a image of SMS messages from an unidentified sender who claims they have been provided "a number of girls" and are requesting "$1000 per female".

Photo Release Occurs Prior to DOJ Due Date

The body has a vast number of images in its custody from the Epstein property, which are "simultaneously explicit and everyday," its press release on this week noted.

The oversight panel first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who passed away in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on allegations of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The photos and records the Epstein property submitted to the committee are different than what is often termed "Epstein-related records". That material are records within the justice department's custody related to its own investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to disclose its files. The scope of the contents included in the DOJ's records is unclear, and it's expected that much of the content will be extensively obscured, comparable to the committee's materials