Investigative Body
The House investigative committee has made public a batch of around 70 photographs obtained from the property of late found guilty sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This represents the third disclosure from a tranche of more than 95,000 images the committee has secured from Epstein's holdings. It contains photographs of quotes from the literary work Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and redacted photos of female foreign passports.
This disclosure occurs hours before the 19 December cut-off for the Department of Justice to release each documents connected to its investigation into Epstein.
"These photos pose further inquiries about what exactly the DOJ has in its possession," stated the senior Democrat of the panel, Robert Garcia.
Several of the photos made public on Thursday depict Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a personal aircraft; Bill Gates standing alongside a female whose face is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a workstation facing Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.
Oversight Panel
These are the latest high-net-worth, influential figures to be photographed in Epstein property images published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly disclosed photos also include US President Donald Trump and past president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, ex- US treasury secretary Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and other figures.
Appearing in the photos is not evidence of any wrongdoing, and several of the photographed men have said they were never involved in Epstein's criminal activity.
In a statement released with the image publication, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate did not offer context or timeframes for the images.
"Images were chosen to provide the general populace with transparency into a illustrative selection of the photos obtained from the holdings, and to give insights into Epstein's circle and his extremely disturbing behavior," the statement says.
Oversight Panel
The publication also contains several photos of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov literary work Lolita written in ink across different parts of a female's body, including her upper body, lower extremity, hipbone, and spine. Lolita recounts the story of a adolescent who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.
One excerpt from the work inscribed across a woman's chest states, "Lolita's name: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth".
There are also a series of images of women's identification and identification documents from countries globally, such as Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.
Committee
The majority of the details on the papers, like identities and birth dates, is obscured but the House Oversight Committee stated in a press release that the travel documents are associated with "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were engaging".
Another image shows Epstein sitting at a table in close proximity flanked by three female figures whose identities have been obscured - one individual has her hand on Epstein's chest under his garment, and another is leaning to view a close-by computer. Epstein appears to be assisting the third fasten a wristband.
Oversight Panel
Another image made public is a screenshot of SMS messages from an unidentified sender who states they have been sent "a number of girls" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars per female".
The body has thousands of photographs in its holdings from the Epstein holdings, which are "simultaneously explicit and everyday," its announcement on recently noted.
The oversight panel first issued a subpoena to the property of Epstein, who passed away in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on accusations of human trafficking, in August.
The photographs and records the Epstein estate gave to the body are separate from what is commonly called "the Epstein files". Those are records within the justice department's possession associated with its own investigation into Epstein.
Under the Transparency Act, which President Trump enacted last month, the DOJ has until 19 December to release its records. The extent of what's found in the DOJ's files is unknown, and it's expected that a large amount of the content will be extensively censored, similar to House Oversight Committee materials
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