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Investigative Body

The House investigative committee has made public a batch of roughly 70 photographs obtained from the property of deceased found guilty sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third such release from a larger collection of in excess of 95,000 photos the committee has secured from Epstein's estate. It includes images of passages from the novel Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and obscured pictures of female international passports.

This action comes hours before the 19 December due date for the Department of Justice to disclose all records related to its investigation into Epstein.

"These latest photos pose more queries about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its custody," remarked the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Made Public

A number of the photos made public on Thursday show Epstein in discussion with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates positioned alongside a woman whose face is censored; Steve Bannon positioned at a table facing Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

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These are the latest affluent, influential men to be seen in Epstein property images released by the House Oversight Committee - formerly released photos also include US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, previous US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Showing up in the photos is is not considered evidence of any illegal activity, and several of the photographed figures have said they were in no way involved in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a statement issued alongside the image publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein estate's representatives did not provide explanatory details or timeframes for the pictures.

"Photos were picked to provide the American people with openness into a representative sample of the photos acquired from the property, and to give understanding into Epstein's associates and his extremely alarming behavior," the statement reads.

Committee

The publication also features several photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita inscribed in ink across different parts of a woman's body, including her torso, foot, hip, and back. Lolita tells the tale of a young girl who was exploited by a middle-aged literature professor.

One excerpt from the novel written across a female's upper body states, "Lo-lee-ta: the point of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the mouth to tap, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a collection of photos of female passports and ID papers from states worldwide, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

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Most of the details on the documents, like names and dates of birth, is obscured but the House Oversight Committee said in a statement that the travel documents pertain to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

A further image depicts Epstein positioned at a table intimately surrounded by three individuals whose features have been redacted - a first has her palm on Epstein's upper body under his garment, and another individual is leaning to look at a close-by device. Epstein can be seen to be aiding the third individual put on a bracelet.

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An additional image made public is a capture of text messages from an unidentified individual who claims they have been sent "a number of girls" and are asking for "$one thousand dollars per girl".

Photograph Disclosure Comes Ahead of DOJ Cut-off

The body has many thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein holdings, which are "both graphic and mundane," its statement on Thursday noted.

The oversight panel first subpoenaed the holdings of Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The photos and documents the Epstein property submitted to the body are different than what is largely termed "the Epstein files". Those are papers in the DOJ's custody connected to its independent probe into Epstein.

In accordance with the recently passed law, which the President signed into law recently, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to publish its documents. The scope of the contents included in the DOJ's files is unclear, and it's expected that a large amount of the material will be heavily obscured, comparable to Congressional releases