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Investigative Body

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

This marks the third such release from a larger collection of more than 95,000 photographs the panel has secured from Epstein's estate. It includes images of quotes from the literary work Lolita written across a female's body, and redacted pictures of female overseas passports.

This action occurs mere hours before the 19 December cut-off for the DOJ to make public each records related to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new photos raise further queries about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its custody," stated the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Photos Made Public

Several of the photos made public on recently feature Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates seen next to a woman whose features is obscured; Steve Bannon seated at a workstation facing Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Investigative Body

These are the latest affluent, prominent figures to be pictured in Epstein's estate photographs released by the committee - earlier disclosed images also include US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Appearing in the photographs is not proof of any illegal activity, and a number of the featured individuals have asserted they were never participating in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a press release accompanying the photo disclosure, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein property holders did not provide context or dates for the pictures.

"Photos were chosen to offer the general populace with clarity into a typical cross-section of the images received from the property, and to provide understanding into Epstein's associates and his exceptionally alarming actions," the announcement states.

Committee

The release also contains a number of photos of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita penned in black ink across different parts of a female's body, including her chest, feet, hip, and rear. Lolita narrates the story of a adolescent who was manipulated by a adult literature professor.

An example of a passage from the book scrawled across a woman's torso says, "Lolita: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the palate to alight, at three, on the teeth".

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

Committee

A large portion of the details on the documents, including identities and DOBs, is redacted but the committee stated in a press release that the travel documents belong to "females whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".

Another photo features Epstein seated at a desk intimately flanked by three female figures whose features have been censored - one individual has her hand on Epstein's chest under his clothing, and a second is crouching to view a adjacent computer. Epstein seems to be aiding the third individual fasten a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

An additional image made public is a capture of text messages from an unknown individual who says they have been supplied "some girls" and are requesting "$1000 per female".

Image Disclosure Comes Ahead of DOJ Cut-off

The panel has many thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein holdings, which are "both graphic and ordinary," its announcement on this week clarified.

The oversight panel first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on accusations of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and files the Epstein estate submitted to the committee are different than what is commonly termed "the Epstein files". Those are papers under the justice department's possession related to its own investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the recently passed law, which the President signed into law recently, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to release its documents. The extent of what's contained in the DOJ's documents is not publicly known, and it's probable that a significant portion of the material will be significantly obscured, akin to Congressional materials