🔗 Share this article

Investigative Body

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a collection of around 70 photos secured from the holdings of late convicted individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This marks the third such release from a larger collection of more than 95,000 photos the panel has secured from Epstein's estate. It contains photographs of passages from the book Lolita inscribed across a woman's body, and redacted pictures of women's international passports.

This release arrives mere hours before the 19th of December cut-off for the Department of Justice to release all files related to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new images pose further queries about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its holdings," said the senior Democrat of the panel, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Images Released

Several of the photos made public on this week depict Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates standing beside a female whose identity is obscured; Steve Bannon positioned at a desk across from Epstein, and ex- Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Committee

These are the most recent wealthy, influential men to be photographed in Epstein property photographs released by the oversight panel - formerly published pictures also include US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, attorney Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Showing up in the photographs is is not considered proof of any misconduct, and many of the featured men have said they were not involved in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a statement issued alongside the photograph release, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein property holders did not offer background information or timings for the images.

"Photos were chosen to offer the general populace with openness into a representative sample of the photos received from the estate, and to offer insights into Epstein's circle and his exceptionally disturbing actions," the release says.

Committee

The disclosure also includes a number of photographs of quotes from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita written in black ink across different parts of a female's body, such as her chest, lower extremity, pelvis, and back. Lolita recounts the story of a adolescent who was groomed by a middle-aged literature professor.

An example of a excerpt from the novel inscribed across a woman's upper body reads, "Lolita's name: the tip of the tongue traveling of three steps down the mouth to land, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a collection of images of women's identification and identification documents from countries worldwide, including Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

A large portion of the data on the documents, like identities and DOBs, is obscured but the committee said in a press release that the travel documents belong to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were engaging".

An additional photo depicts Epstein sitting at a table intimately in the company of three female figures whose features have been obscured - a first has her hand on Epstein's chest under his garment, and another individual is bending to look at a adjacent computer. Epstein can be seen to be assisting the final person put on a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

A further photograph made public is a capture of text messages from an unknown individual who says they have been supplied "several females" and are demanding "$1000 per female".

Photograph Disclosure Arrives Before DOJ Deadline

The panel has a vast number of images in its holdings from the Epstein estate, which are "at once graphic and mundane," its announcement on recently explained.

The House Oversight Committee first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on allegations of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The images and files the Epstein estate gave to the panel are separate from what is often termed "the Epstein documents". Those are records under the justice department's custody related to its own probe into Epstein.

In accordance with the Transparency Act, which the President enacted in November, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to disclose its files. The scope of what is contained in the DOJ's documents is unclear, and it's likely that much of the content will be extensively obscured, comparable to the committee's documents