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Investigative Body

The House investigative committee has published a collection of around 70 images from the estate of deceased convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third publication from a tranche of in excess of 95,000 photos the committee has obtained from Epstein's property. It contains photographs of excerpts from the book Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and redacted images of women's foreign passports.

This action occurs hours before the 19 December cut-off for the Department of Justice to release all records related to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These latest photographs pose further inquiries about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its possession," said the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Photos Released

A number of the photographs made public on this week show Epstein speaking with academic and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates standing next to a individual whose face is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a desk opposite Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Oversight Panel

These are the most recent high-net-worth, prominent individuals to be photographed in Epstein estate photographs published by the House Oversight Committee - earlier disclosed pictures also include US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Showing up in the images is not proof of any misconduct, and many of the pictured individuals have said they were in no way involved in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a press release accompanying the photograph publication, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate's representatives did not offer explanatory details or timings for the pictures.

"Photographs were chosen to furnish the general populace with transparency into a illustrative selection of the images obtained from the property, and to provide understanding into Epstein's associates and his extremely alarming behavior," the statement reads.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also includes a number of photographs of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita inscribed in black ink across different parts of a female's body, such as her chest, feet, pelvis, and rear. Lolita narrates the account of a adolescent who was exploited by a adult literature professor.

An example of a excerpt from the work inscribed across a woman's torso reads, "Lolita's name: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a series of photos of women's passports and official papers from countries worldwide, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

The majority of the information on the IDs, like names and birth dates, is obscured but the panel indicated in a press release that the passports belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

An additional photo features Epstein positioned at a table intimately in the company of three female figures whose features have been obscured - a first has her hand on Epstein's torso under his garment, and another is bending to examine a nearby laptop. Epstein seems to be assisting the final person put on a wristband.

Committee

An additional photo made public is a image of digital messages from an unidentified sender who claims they have been sent "some girls" and are asking for "$$1,000 for each individual".

Photo Disclosure Occurs Before DOJ Deadline

The committee has many thousands of images in its custody from the Epstein holdings, which are "both disturbing and ordinary," its press release on Thursday clarified.

The Congressional committee first issued a subpoena to the property of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of human trafficking, in August.

The photographs and records the Epstein estate's representatives provided to the committee are separate from what is largely termed "the Epstein files". That material are papers in the justice department's custody connected to its separate probe into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law recently, the DOJ has until 19 December to release its records. The scope of the contents included in the DOJ's documents is unclear, and it's expected that much of the material will be extensively censored, similar to House Oversight Committee materials