🔗 Share this article

Committee

The Congressional oversight panel has made public a set of roughly 70 images secured from the holdings of deceased convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third publication from a tranche of more than 95,000 photographs the panel has obtained from Epstein's estate. It includes pictures of quotes from the book Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and obscured pictures of women's overseas passports.

This release arrives hours before the December 19th cut-off for the Justice Department to make public every documents associated with its investigation into Epstein.

"These new images pose additional queries about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its custody," said the senior Democrat of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Images Released

Several of the images published on Thursday depict Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates positioned next to a female whose identity is obscured; Steve Bannon positioned at a table facing Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a evening meal.

Oversight Panel

These are the latest high-net-worth, powerful individuals to be pictured in Epstein estate images disclosed by the oversight panel - formerly published pictures also show 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 others.

Showing up in the images is is not considered evidence of any wrongdoing, and several of the photographed figures have stated they were never implicated in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a announcement accompanying the image publication, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee stated the Epstein property holders did not offer background information or timings for the images.

"Images were chosen to provide the American people with openness into a representative sample of the images acquired from the holdings, and to offer understanding into Epstein's circle and his profoundly alarming activities," the statement states.

Committee

The release also contains several images of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita inscribed in dark ink across different parts of a female's body, like her torso, lower extremity, pelvis, and back. Lolita tells the story of a minor who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.

A particular excerpt from the book scrawled across a female's chest reads, "Lolita: the point of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to alight, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a series of photographs of women's passports and identification documents from nations globally, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

Most of the data on the IDs, such as names and birth dates, is redacted but the committee stated in a press release that the travel documents are associated with "females whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were interacting with".

A further photograph shows Epstein seated at a table closely surrounded by three female figures whose features have been obscured - one has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his garment, and a second is leaning to view a nearby laptop. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third attach a piece of jewelry.

Oversight Panel

Another photo released is a screenshot of digital messages from an unidentified individual who says they have been provided "some girls" and are demanding "$one thousand dollars per female".

Image Publication Occurs Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The panel has a vast number of photos in its possession from the Epstein holdings, which are "both disturbing and ordinary," its statement on Thursday explained.

The Congressional committee first legally compelled the estate of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while facing trial on allegations of sex trafficking, in August.

The images and files the Epstein estate's representatives submitted to the committee are distinct from what is commonly called "the Epstein documents". Those files are documents within the justice department's custody connected to its separate investigation into Epstein.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the President signed into law in November, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its records. The scope of what is contained in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's probable that a large amount of the material will be significantly censored, comparable to Congressional releases