🔗 Share this article

Committee

The House investigative committee has made public a collection of around 70 photographs from the estate of deceased found guilty individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the third such disclosure from a larger collection of over 95,000 photos the panel has obtained from Epstein's holdings. It contains pictures of excerpts from the book Lolita written across a female's body, and censored photos of women's foreign passports.

This action occurs mere hours before the 19th of December deadline for the DOJ to make public every files related to its investigation into Epstein.

"These new images raise more queries about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its possession," said the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Made Public

Several of the photos released on recently show Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky aboard a personal aircraft; Bill Gates seen alongside a individual whose face is censored; Steve Bannon seated at a desk facing Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Committee

These are the most recent wealthy, prominent figures to be photographed in Epstein's estate photographs published by the oversight panel - formerly disclosed pictures also depict US President Donald Trump and former 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 not indication of any misconduct, and a number of the photographed men have asserted they were not involved in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a statement issued alongside the photograph release, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not offer background information or timeframes for the photographs.

"Images were chosen to offer the general populace with transparency into a representative sample of the images acquired from the property, and to provide insights into Epstein's associates and his extremely alarming actions," the announcement says.

Oversight Panel

The disclosure also contains a number of images of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in ink across several locations of a woman's body, such as her chest, foot, hip, and rear. Lolita narrates the story of a adolescent who was exploited by a adult literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work inscribed across a woman's torso states, "Lolita: the point of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a number of images of women's identification and ID papers from states worldwide, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Oversight Panel

Most of the information on the papers, including identities and birth dates, is obscured but the panel indicated in a announcement that the travel documents are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

Another image shows Epstein sitting at a workstation intimately in the company of three female figures whose features have been obscured - one has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his clothing, and a second is leaning to view a adjacent computer. Epstein seems to be assisting the final person put on a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

An additional photograph released is a capture of digital messages from an unknown sender who claims they have been provided "several females" and are demanding "$$1,000 for each individual".

Photograph Release Comes Prior to DOJ Due Date

The committee has thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "both explicit and mundane," its press release on Thursday noted.

The oversight panel first issued a subpoena to the holdings of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on accusations of human trafficking, in August.

The photos and documents the Epstein estate provided to the panel are different than what is often called "the Epstein files". That material are papers under the Department of Justice's control associated with its own investigation into Epstein.

Under the recently passed law, which Donald Trump signed into law in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its documents. The extent of the contents included in the DOJ's files is unclear, and it's probable that much of the material will be heavily obscured, similar to House Oversight Committee documents