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Oversight Panel

The House Oversight Committee has released a collection of approximately 70 photographs obtained from the property of former convicted individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third publication from a cache of in excess of 95,000 photos the body has obtained from Epstein's holdings. It includes images of excerpts from the book Lolita written across a woman's body, and obscured photos of women's international passports.

This release occurs hours before the 19 December due date for the Justice Department to release all records associated with its probe into Epstein.

"These photographs raise more inquiries about precisely what the DOJ has in its possession," remarked the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photographs Released

A number of the photos published on Thursday feature Epstein conversing with academic and activist Noam Chomsky inside a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing beside a female whose face is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a workstation facing Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Committee

These are the most recent wealthy, influential figures to be seen in Epstein property photographs published by the committee - previously published pictures also depict US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Showing up in the photographs is is not considered proof of any misconduct, and a number of the pictured individuals have stated they were not participating in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a press release accompanying the photograph disclosure, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not provide context or timings for the photographs.

"Photographs were picked to provide the American people with transparency into a representative sample of the photos received from the holdings, and to provide perspectives into Epstein's network and his profoundly disturbing actions," the announcement reads.

Oversight Panel

The publication also includes a number of images of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita written in ink across several locations of a woman's body, including her upper body, foot, pelvis, and spine. Lolita recounts the story of a young girl who was manipulated by a adult literature professor.

One passage from the book written across a female's torso states, "Lolita: the tip of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the roof of the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a collection of photographs of female travel documents and identification documents from states worldwide, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

A large portion of the data on the documents, such as names and birth dates, is redacted but the committee stated in a statement that the passports belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his conspirators were interacting with".

Another photograph features Epstein sitting at a desk in close proximity flanked by three individuals whose features have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's chest under his clothing, and another individual is bending to view a nearby laptop. Epstein seems to be assisting the third individual attach a wristband.

Investigative Body

Another image made public is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unnamed person who states they have been provided "some girls" and are demanding "$$1,000 per female".

Photo Release Comes Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The panel has many thousands of photos in its custody from the Epstein estate, which are "simultaneously graphic and ordinary," its press release on Thursday clarified.

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

The images and records the Epstein estate's representatives gave to the committee are different than what is commonly referred to "the Epstein files". Those are records in the justice department's control 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 until the date of 19 December to publish its documents. The full nature of the contents included in the DOJ's documents is unknown, and it's expected that much of the content will be significantly obscured, comparable to the committee's documents