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Committee

The House Oversight Committee has released a set of roughly 70 images secured from the holdings of deceased adjudicated sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third release from a cache of over 95,000 images the committee has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It includes pictures of quotes from the novel Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and censored photos of women's foreign passports.

This disclosure arrives hours before the 19th of December deadline for the Department of Justice to make public each files associated with its probe into Epstein.

"These photographs raise additional inquiries about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its possession," remarked the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photos Made Public

Several of the images released on Thursday show Epstein in discussion with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a private jet; Bill Gates positioned alongside a individual whose features is redacted; Steve Bannon sitting at a workstation opposite Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Oversight Panel

These are the latest affluent, influential individuals to be pictured in Epstein estate photographs published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly published pictures also show US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.

Being pictured in the photos is not indication of any illegal activity, and several of the photographed individuals have said they were never implicated in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a statement issued alongside the image release, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate's representatives did not offer context or timings for the photographs.

"Photos were selected to offer the American people with openness into a illustrative selection of the images received from the holdings, and to give understanding into Epstein's associates and his profoundly disturbing actions," the release says.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also features a number of images of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita written in black ink across several locations of a female's body, like her torso, lower extremity, pelvis, and back. Lolita tells the account of a young girl who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.

An example of a quote from the novel written across a woman's chest says, "Lolita: the point of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the mouth to land, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a collection of photographs of female travel documents and identification documents from nations globally, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

The majority of the information on the documents, like names and dates of birth, is redacted but the panel stated in a press release that the travel documents pertain to "females whom Jeffrey Epstein and his conspirators were involved with".

A further photo shows Epstein positioned at a workstation intimately in the company of three individuals whose identities have been redacted - a first has her palm on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and another individual is bending to view a nearby computer. Epstein appears to be helping the third individual put on a piece of jewelry.

Investigative Body

A further photo disclosed is a screenshot of text messages from an unidentified sender who states they have been supplied "several females" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars per girl".

Image Release Arrives Before DOJ Due Date

The committee has many thousands of images in its possession from the Epstein estate, which are "simultaneously graphic and mundane," its statement on recently clarified.

The oversight panel first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The images and files the Epstein estate gave to the body are different than what is commonly referred to "the Epstein files". Those are records in the Department of Justice's custody connected to its own investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the President signed into law last month, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to release its files. The scope of what's found in the DOJ's files is unknown, and it's likely that much of the content will be heavily obscured, similar to Congressional documents