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Committee

The Congressional oversight panel has published a set of around 70 photographs from the estate of late found guilty sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third publication from a tranche of over 95,000 photographs the body has secured from Epstein's estate. It contains photographs of excerpts from the literary work Lolita written across a woman's body, and censored pictures of female overseas passports.

This disclosure arrives just hours before the 19th of December due date for the Justice Department to release each records associated with its investigation into Epstein.

"These latest photos bring up additional queries about precisely what the Justice Department has in its custody," stated the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Released

A number of the images made public on this week show Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a private jet; Bill Gates seen alongside a woman whose face is obscured; Steve Bannon positioned at a workstation across from Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

Committee

These are the newest high-net-worth, prominent men to be seen in Epstein's estate photos released by the oversight panel - earlier published photos also depict US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, ex- US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the images is not indication of any misconduct, and a number of the photographed men have stated they were not implicated in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a press release released with the photograph publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not offer explanatory details or dates for the images.

"Photographs were picked to provide the general populace with transparency into a typical cross-section of the photographs acquired from the holdings, and to give understanding into Epstein's network and his exceptionally disturbing behavior," the announcement reads.

Oversight Panel

The release also includes several photos of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita written in ink across different parts of a woman's body, such as her chest, feet, hip, and back. Lolita narrates the story of a young girl who was groomed by a middle-aged literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work scrawled across a woman's chest reads, "Lolita's name: the tip of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a collection of photos of female identification and ID papers from countries around the world, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

Most of the information on the documents, like identities and birth dates, is censored but the panel stated in a statement that the travel documents pertain to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

A further image features Epstein positioned at a table intimately in the company of three female figures whose faces have been obscured - a first has her hand on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and a second is leaning to examine a close-by laptop. Epstein seems to be aiding the third attach a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

An additional photograph disclosed is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unnamed person who states they have been sent "a number of girls" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars per female".

Image Publication Comes Before DOJ Deadline

The panel has many thousands of images in its possession from the Epstein holdings, which are "simultaneously disturbing and ordinary," its statement on this week clarified.

The Congressional committee first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who passed away in a New York jail in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The photographs and records the Epstein estate submitted to the committee are separate from what is commonly referred to "Epstein-related records". Those files are records within the justice department's custody connected to its separate investigation into Epstein.

In accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the President made law last month, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its files. The scope of what is found in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's likely that much of the material will be heavily redacted, similar to House Oversight Committee releases