🔗 Share this article

Oversight Panel

The House investigative committee has made public a collection of approximately 70 photos obtained from the property of late adjudicated sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the third such disclosure from a tranche of over 95,000 images the panel has obtained from Epstein's holdings. It contains photographs of excerpts from the novel Lolita inscribed across a female's body, and obscured photos of female international passports.

This disclosure comes hours before the December 19th due date for the Justice Department to release all files connected to its inquiry into Epstein.

"These latest photographs pose more questions about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its holdings," remarked the ranking member of the committee, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Images Made Public

Some of the photographs released on Thursday depict Epstein in discussion with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky on a private plane; Bill Gates seen next to a individual whose identity is redacted; Steve Bannon positioned at a table opposite Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Investigative Body

These are the most recent wealthy, powerful men to be pictured in Epstein property images released by the committee - formerly published pictures also include US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as film director Woody Allen, previous US treasury secretary Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and additional individuals.

Being pictured in the photographs is does not constitute indication of any illegal activity, and a number of the pictured men have asserted they were never participating in Epstein's unlawful actions.

In a announcement issued alongside the image disclosure, Lawmakers on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate did not supply context or dates for the photographs.

"Photos were chosen to furnish the public with openness into a representative sample of the images obtained from the holdings, and to offer insights into Epstein's network and his extremely alarming behavior," the announcement says.

Investigative Body

The publication also features several images of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita inscribed in ink across different parts of a woman's body, like her torso, foot, hipbone, and back. Lolita recounts the account of a adolescent who was groomed by a older literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work written across a female's chest states, "Lolita: the point of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to land, at three, on the teeth".

Additionally, there are a series of images of women's passports and identification documents from countries globally, such as Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

Most of the information on the papers, including names and birth dates, is censored but the committee indicated in a statement that the passports are associated with "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators were involved with".

A further photograph depicts Epstein sitting at a desk closely in the company of three individuals whose features have been obscured - a first has her palm on Epstein's torso under his shirt, and another individual is crouching to examine a close-by device. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third individual put on a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

An additional image made public is a screenshot of digital messages from an unidentified individual who states they have been sent "some girls" and are demanding "$1000 per girl".

Photograph Release Comes Prior to DOJ Due Date

The body has thousands of photographs in its custody from the Epstein estate, which are "both graphic and everyday," its press release on Thursday noted.

The House Oversight Committee first legally compelled the property of Epstein, who was found dead in a New York prison in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

The images and records the Epstein estate submitted to the panel are distinct from what is largely referred to "the Epstein files". Those files are papers in the justice department's custody related to its separate probe into Epstein.

Pursuant to the recently passed law, which Donald Trump signed into law recently, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to disclose its documents. The extent of the contents found in the DOJ's files is unclear, and it's expected that a significant portion of the material will be significantly censored, similar to the committee's documents