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Investigative Body

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a set of around 70 images from the estate of deceased adjudicated sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the third such disclosure from a cache of in excess of 95,000 photographs the committee has secured from Epstein's estate. It contains pictures of quotes from the novel Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and redacted photos of women's overseas passports.

This release arrives just hours before the December 19th cut-off for the Justice Department to disclose all records connected to its investigation into Epstein.

"These new photographs bring up additional inquiries about what exactly the Justice Department has in its custody," said the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Photos Released

Some of the photographs published on Thursday depict Epstein in discussion with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing beside a woman whose features is obscured; Steve Bannon seated at a desk across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Committee

These are the newest affluent, influential individuals to be seen in Epstein's estate images released by the oversight panel - previously disclosed pictures also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Appearing in the photos is not indication of any misconduct, and a number of the featured figures have stated they were not participating in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a announcement issued alongside the image disclosure, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not offer context or timeframes for the pictures.

"Photographs were selected to provide the general populace with clarity into a illustrative selection of the photographs acquired from the property, and to offer perspectives into Epstein's associates and his exceptionally alarming behavior," the release states.

Investigative Body

The release also features a number of images of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita penned in dark ink across various areas of a woman's body, such as her upper body, foot, hipbone, and back. Lolita tells the tale of a adolescent who was exploited by a older literature professor.

An example of a excerpt from the book inscribed across a woman's upper body says, "Lo-lee-ta: the point of the tongue traveling of three steps down the roof of the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a number of photographs of women's travel documents and identification documents from states globally, such as Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

A large portion of the data on the IDs, including identities and birth dates, is censored but the House Oversight Committee stated in a announcement that the passports belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were involved with".

Another photo features Epstein seated at a table intimately surrounded by three individuals whose features have been obscured - one individual has her palm on Epstein's chest under his shirt, and another is crouching to examine a close-by computer. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third individual fasten a wristband.

Investigative Body

Another photograph disclosed is a image of SMS messages from an unnamed individual who says they have been sent "a number of girls" and are demanding "$one thousand dollars per female".

Photograph Release Arrives Prior to DOJ Deadline

The body has thousands of images in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "both explicit and mundane," its announcement on this week clarified.

The House Oversight Committee first legally compelled the property of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on charges of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The images and records the Epstein estate provided to the committee are different than what is often referred to "Epstein-related records". Those files are documents in the Department of Justice's control related to its independent investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the recently passed law, which the President signed into law in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its documents. The scope of what is found in the DOJ's files is not publicly known, and it's likely that a large amount of the material will be extensively obscured, akin to the committee's materials