🔗 Share this article

Committee

The House Oversight Committee has published a batch of roughly 70 photos obtained from the property of deceased found guilty individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third disclosure from a tranche of over 95,000 photographs the panel has obtained from Epstein's estate. It features photographs of quotes from the book Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and censored pictures of women's overseas passports.

This release arrives hours before the December 19th due date for the Justice Department to make public every records related to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new photos pose additional inquiries about what exactly the DOJ has in its holdings," said the senior Democrat of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Photographs Made Public

Some of the photographs released on Thursday feature Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates seen next to a female whose face is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Oversight Panel

These are the most recent wealthy, influential individuals to be photographed in Epstein property photos released by the oversight panel - previously disclosed photos also depict US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Appearing in the photographs is is not considered evidence of any wrongdoing, and a number of the photographed individuals have said they were not involved in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a announcement issued alongside the photo release, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein estate's representatives did not offer background information or timeframes for the pictures.

"Images were chosen to provide the general populace with clarity into a illustrative selection of the images acquired from the holdings, and to offer perspectives into Epstein's circle and his extremely alarming behavior," the announcement says.

Investigative Body

The publication also contains a number of photographs of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita penned in ink across several locations of a woman's body, such as her upper body, feet, hipbone, and spine. Lolita narrates the story of a minor who was exploited by a adult literature professor.

One passage from the work scrawled across a female's torso reads, "Lolita: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the mouth to land, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a number of photographs of female passports and identification documents from states globally, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

The majority of the data on the IDs, including identities and DOBs, is obscured but the committee indicated in a announcement that the passports pertain to "females whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

A further image depicts Epstein sitting at a desk intimately in the company of three women whose identities have been obscured - one individual has her hand on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and another individual is crouching to view a adjacent laptop. Epstein appears to be helping the third individual attach a wristband.

Committee

A further photograph made public is a capture of SMS messages from an unidentified sender who claims they have been supplied "a number of girls" and are demanding "$one thousand dollars per girl".

Photograph Publication Arrives Prior to DOJ Due Date

The committee has thousands of photographs in its possession from the Epstein estate, which are "both graphic and mundane," its announcement on recently 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 crimes, in August.

The photographs and files the Epstein estate provided to the committee are separate from what is often termed "Epstein-related records". Those are papers in the DOJ's control related to its own investigation into Epstein.

In accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the President made law last month, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to publish its documents. The extent of the contents found in the DOJ's records is unclear, and it's expected that a significant portion of the content will be significantly censored, comparable to House Oversight Committee materials