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Committee

The House investigative committee has published a collection of roughly 70 photos from the estate of late convicted individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the latest in a series of disclosure from a cache of over 95,000 images the committee has obtained from Epstein's property. It contains photographs of passages from the literary work Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and redacted images of women's foreign passports.

This disclosure comes hours before the 19 December due date for the Justice Department to make public every documents connected to its probe into Epstein.

"These photographs pose more inquiries about what exactly the DOJ has in its holdings," stated the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Released

A number of the images released on Thursday depict Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky on a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing beside a female whose face is redacted; Steve Bannon seated at a table facing Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Committee

These are the latest high-net-worth, powerful men to be photographed in Epstein estate photos disclosed by the oversight panel - earlier released pictures also depict US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Showing up in the images is not proof of any wrongdoing, and several of the featured individuals have stated they were in no way involved in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a announcement accompanying the photo publication, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not provide background information or dates for the photographs.

"Images were selected to furnish the general populace with clarity into a representative sample of the images received from the property, and to give perspectives into Epstein's network and his extremely troubling actions," the announcement says.

Committee

The publication also features multiple images of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita written in black ink across different parts of a woman's body, such as her torso, lower extremity, pelvis, and spine. Lolita recounts the tale of a young girl who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

One excerpt from the book scrawled across a woman's chest says, "Lolita's name: 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 photos of female travel documents and identification documents from states globally, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

The majority of the information on the IDs, including identities and dates of birth, is obscured but the committee stated in a press release that the travel documents are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his conspirators were involved with".

Another photo depicts Epstein sitting at a workstation in close proximity in the company of three female figures whose features have been censored - one has her hand on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and another is leaning to examine a adjacent computer. Epstein can be seen to be assisting the final person fasten a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

A further photograph disclosed is a screenshot of text messages from an unidentified person who claims they have been supplied "some girls" and are demanding "$$1,000 for each individual".

Photo Disclosure Occurs Ahead of DOJ Cut-off

The body has many thousands of photos in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "simultaneously graphic and everyday," its press release on this week noted.

The Congressional committee first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York correctional facility in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The photos and records the Epstein property submitted to the panel are different than what is commonly called "Epstein-related records". That material are documents in the Department of Justice's control related to its separate probe into Epstein.

Under the recently passed law, which the President signed into law in November, the DOJ has until 19 December to disclose its records. The extent of what is found in the DOJ's documents is unknown, and it's expected that much of the material will be extensively obscured, comparable to House Oversight Committee releases