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Committee

The House investigative committee has made public a batch of around 70 photos secured from the holdings of deceased convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third disclosure from a larger collection of in excess of 95,000 photographs the body has secured from Epstein's property. It features images of excerpts from the novel Lolita inscribed across a woman's body, and censored pictures of women's foreign passports.

This disclosure arrives just hours before the 19th of December deadline for the Department of Justice to make public all documents connected to its investigation into Epstein.

"These photographs pose further questions about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its holdings," said the senior Democrat of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Images Disclosed

Some of the images published on Thursday depict Epstein speaking with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a personal aircraft; Bill Gates seen alongside a individual whose face is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a workstation opposite Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Oversight Panel

These are the latest high-net-worth, prominent individuals to be seen in Epstein's estate photos published by the committee - earlier published photos also show US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the photographs is is not considered evidence of any misconduct, and a number of the featured individuals have said they were in no way participating in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a statement released with the photo release, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate did not provide explanatory details or dates for the pictures.

"Images were picked to provide the public with transparency into a illustrative selection of the photos acquired from the holdings, and to give understanding into Epstein's network and his extremely alarming activities," the statement says.

Oversight Panel

The release also features multiple photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita written in dark ink across different parts of a female's body, like her chest, lower extremity, pelvis, and rear. Lolita tells the story of a young girl who was manipulated by a older literature professor.

A particular excerpt from the book inscribed across a woman's torso reads, "Lo-lee-ta: the point of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the roof of the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a series of photos of women's identification and official papers from states around the world, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

A large portion of the data on the documents, such as identities and birth dates, is redacted but the panel said in a announcement that the travel documents pertain to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".

Another photograph depicts Epstein sitting at a desk intimately surrounded by three individuals whose faces have been redacted - a first has her palm on Epstein's upper body under his shirt, and another individual is crouching to look at a close-by laptop. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third put on a piece of jewelry.

Investigative Body

A further photo made public is a image of text messages from an unknown sender who says they have been provided "several females" and are requesting "$$1,000 per female".

Image Publication Occurs Before DOJ Due Date

The body has thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein property, which are "both graphic and ordinary," its press release on recently clarified.

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

The photographs and files the Epstein property gave to the body are separate from what is largely referred to "the Epstein documents". Those files are documents in the justice department's custody associated with its independent probe into Epstein.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump enacted in November, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to release its records. The extent of what is found in the DOJ's records is unclear, and it's expected that much of the content will be significantly obscured, similar to House Oversight Committee documents