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Oversight Panel

The Congressional oversight panel has released a set of roughly 70 photos secured from the holdings of deceased adjudicated sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third such release from a cache of over 95,000 images the committee has obtained from Epstein's property. It contains images of passages from the book Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and redacted pictures of female foreign passports.

This disclosure occurs just hours before the 19th of December due date for the DOJ to disclose every documents related to its investigation into Epstein.

"These new photos raise more inquiries about exactly what the DOJ has in its holdings," remarked the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Photographs Made Public

Several of the photographs made public on Thursday show Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates positioned next to a female whose face is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Committee

These are the most recent wealthy, prominent figures to be pictured in Epstein property images published by the oversight panel - formerly released photos also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, previous US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Appearing in the photographs is is not considered evidence of any illegal activity, and many of the pictured men have said they were in no way participating in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a statement released with the image disclosure, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate did not provide explanatory details or timings for the photographs.

"Images were chosen to offer the public with openness into a representative sample of the photos received from the estate, and to offer understanding into Epstein's circle and his profoundly disturbing behavior," the release says.

Investigative Body

The disclosure also features several 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, foot, hipbone, and spine. Lolita tells the story of a adolescent who was groomed by a older literature professor.

A particular passage from the book inscribed across a female's torso states, "Lo-lee-ta: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a number of images of female identification and ID papers from states globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

Most of the information on the documents, like identities and birth dates, is redacted but the House Oversight Committee said in a statement that the passports are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were interacting with".

An additional photo shows Epstein sitting at a table closely flanked by three female figures whose features have been redacted - one has her hand on Epstein's chest under his shirt, and another is bending to view a adjacent laptop. Epstein can be seen to be assisting the third fasten a bracelet.

Committee

An additional photo disclosed is a image of SMS messages from an unidentified person who claims they have been supplied "several females" and are asking for "$one thousand dollars for each individual".

Photo Publication Arrives Before DOJ Due Date

The body has thousands of photographs in its possession from the Epstein property, which are "at once explicit and ordinary," its announcement on this week explained.

The oversight panel first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on allegations of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The photographs and records the Epstein estate's representatives submitted to the body are distinct from what is often termed "the Epstein files". Those files are documents within the DOJ's control connected to its independent probe into Epstein.

In accordance with the Transparency Act, which the President made law recently, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to disclose its records. The scope of what is found in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's probable that much of the material will be heavily obscured, akin to House Oversight Committee releases