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Committee

The House investigative committee has made public a collection of approximately 70 photos obtained from the property of late found guilty individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third such disclosure from a larger collection of more than 95,000 images the panel has secured from Epstein's estate. It features images of passages from the novel Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and redacted pictures of female overseas passports.

This action arrives hours before the 19 December due date for the Justice Department to release all records connected to its investigation into Epstein.

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

Contents in the Photographs Released

A number of the photos released on Thursday show Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a private jet; Bill Gates positioned beside a individual whose identity is obscured; Steve Bannon seated at a desk facing Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Investigative Body

These are the newest high-net-worth, powerful men to be seen in Epstein estate photos disclosed by the committee - previously released pictures also depict 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.

Appearing in the images is does not constitute indication of any misconduct, and several of the photographed individuals have said they were in no way participating in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a announcement released with the photograph release, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not provide explanatory details or timeframes for the photographs.

"Photos were chosen to furnish the general populace with openness into a illustrative selection of the photographs received from the property, and to offer understanding into Epstein's circle and his profoundly disturbing behavior," the statement reads.

Investigative Body

The disclosure also includes several photographs of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita inscribed in dark ink across various areas of a woman's body, like her upper body, foot, hip, and rear. Lolita tells the story of a adolescent who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.

One excerpt from the novel written across a woman's torso states, "Lolita: the point of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a collection of photos of female identification and official papers from states globally, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

Most of the data on the documents, including identities and dates of birth, is obscured but the committee said in a statement that the travel documents are associated with "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his conspirators were interacting with".

A further image features Epstein sitting at a table closely in the company of three individuals whose features have been censored - one individual has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his garment, and a second is crouching to view a nearby device. Epstein seems to be assisting the third individual fasten a bracelet.

Investigative Body

An additional photograph made public is a capture of text messages from an unnamed individual who says they have been sent "a number of girls" and are requesting "$1000 per female".

Image Release Occurs Before DOJ Cut-off

The committee has thousands of photos in its custody from the Epstein holdings, which are "both disturbing and everyday," its press release on this week clarified.

The Congressional committee first subpoenaed the property of Epstein, who passed away in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The images and records the Epstein estate submitted to the committee are different than what is largely called "Epstein-related records". Those are records within the justice department's custody associated with its separate investigation into Epstein.

Under the Transparency Act, which Donald Trump enacted last month, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to publish its records. The scope of what's contained in the DOJ's documents is unknown, and it's likely that much of the material will be heavily censored, similar to the committee's materials