🔗 Share this article

Oversight Panel

The House investigative committee has published a batch of roughly 70 photographs obtained from the property of late found guilty individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third release from a tranche of over 95,000 images the panel has secured from Epstein's property. It features photographs of quotes from the book Lolita written across a female's body, and obscured images of women's foreign passports.

This release occurs hours before the 19 December due date for the DOJ to make public every files connected to its probe into Epstein.

"These new images pose more inquiries about exactly what the DOJ has in its custody," remarked the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photographs Made Public

Several of the photos released on recently show Epstein conversing with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky on a private plane; Bill Gates standing beside a individual whose identity is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a table opposite Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Oversight Panel

These are the most recent affluent, prominent men to be photographed in Epstein estate images released by the committee - previously disclosed images also depict US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Showing up in the photos is does not constitute evidence of any wrongdoing, and a number of the pictured individuals have said they were not involved in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a press release issued alongside the photograph release, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate's representatives did not provide context or dates for the pictures.

"Photographs were picked to furnish the American people with openness into a typical cross-section of the images received from the estate, and to provide understanding into Epstein's circle and his exceptionally troubling behavior," the release says.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also features a number of photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita penned in dark ink across different parts of a woman's body, like her torso, feet, hipbone, and rear. Lolita narrates the account of a adolescent who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

One excerpt from the book written across a female's torso states, "Lolita's name: the end of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a number of images of female passports and ID papers from countries around the world, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

The majority of the details on the documents, including names and birth dates, is censored but the committee indicated in a press release that the passports belong to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were involved with".

An additional photograph features Epstein positioned at a desk closely flanked by three women whose identities have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and a second is crouching to view a nearby computer. Epstein seems to be aiding the final person fasten a bracelet.

Committee

An additional photograph made public is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unknown individual who states they have been supplied "several females" and are asking for "$one thousand dollars for each individual".

Photograph Disclosure Arrives Prior to DOJ Cut-off

The committee has many thousands of photographs in its possession from the Epstein property, which are "at once explicit and mundane," its announcement on Thursday noted.

The oversight panel first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of sex trafficking, in August.

The photos and documents the Epstein property provided to the panel are different than what is commonly called "the Epstein documents". Those files are records within the Department of Justice's control connected to its separate investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Transparency Act, which Donald Trump enacted last month, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to disclose its documents. The extent of what is included in the DOJ's files is unknown, and it's expected that a significant portion of the information will be heavily censored, similar to Congressional materials