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Oversight Panel

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a set of roughly 70 images secured from the holdings of former convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third such release from a cache of over 95,000 photographs the committee has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It includes images of excerpts from the book Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and redacted images of female overseas passports.

This action comes hours before the December 19th deadline for the Justice Department to make public all records related to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These latest images bring up further questions about precisely what the DOJ has in its custody," stated the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Photos Made Public

A number of the photos released on Thursday show Epstein in discussion with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a private plane; Bill Gates positioned next to a woman whose features is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a table across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Oversight Panel

These are the latest high-net-worth, powerful men to be pictured in Epstein property photos disclosed by the House Oversight Committee - previously published images also depict US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Appearing in the images is does not constitute proof of any misconduct, and many of the pictured men have stated they were not involved in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a announcement released with the photo publication, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate did not offer context or timings for the images.

"Photos were chosen to furnish the American people with transparency into a illustrative selection of the photos obtained from the estate, and to give insights into Epstein's network and his exceptionally alarming behavior," the announcement reads.

Investigative Body

The release also contains several photos of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita penned in ink across several locations of a woman's body, including her chest, feet, pelvis, and rear. Lolita tells the story of a minor who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

A particular excerpt from the novel inscribed across a female's chest states, "Lolita's name: the tip of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a number of photos of women's passports and ID papers from countries worldwide, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

Most of the information on the papers, including identities and DOBs, is obscured but the House Oversight Committee stated in a announcement that the travel documents belong to "females whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were involved with".

An additional photograph shows Epstein seated at a workstation intimately surrounded by three individuals whose features have been redacted - a first has her hand on Epstein's chest under his garment, and a second is crouching to view a adjacent laptop. Epstein appears to be assisting the final person put on a wristband.

Committee

An additional image released is a capture of text messages from an unidentified person who states they have been supplied "a number of girls" and are demanding "$$1,000 per female".

Photograph Disclosure Comes Before DOJ Deadline

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

The House Oversight Committee first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The images and files the Epstein property provided to the body are distinct from what is largely termed "the Epstein files". Those files are papers under the justice department's possession associated with its independent probe into Epstein.

Under the recently passed law, which Donald Trump made law last month, the DOJ has until 19 December to disclose its documents. The extent of what's contained in the DOJ's documents is unclear, and it's probable that a significant portion of the material will be heavily censored, comparable to Congressional releases