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The Congressional oversight panel has made public a set of around 70 photos secured from the holdings of former convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This represents the third release from a cache of in excess of 95,000 photographs the body has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It includes pictures of excerpts from the book Lolita scrawled across a woman's body, and censored pictures of women's international passports.

This disclosure arrives just hours before the 19 December due date for the Justice Department to release every records associated with its inquiry into Epstein.

"These new images pose more inquiries about exactly what the Department of Justice has in its possession," stated the Democratic lead of the committee, Robert Garcia.

Contents in the Photographs Disclosed

A number of the images made public on recently feature Epstein conversing with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky aboard a private plane; Bill Gates standing next to a female whose features is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a desk across from Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

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These are the newest high-net-worth, prominent figures to be photographed in Epstein property images released by the oversight panel - previously published photos also depict US President Donald Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton, as well as movie director Woody Allen, previous US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, counsel Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the photos is is not considered evidence of any wrongdoing, and several of the photographed men have said they were never involved in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a announcement released with the image disclosure, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee said the Epstein estate's representatives did not offer explanatory details or dates for the pictures.

"Photographs were selected to offer the general populace with transparency into a illustrative selection of the photographs received from the holdings, and to give understanding into Epstein's circle and his extremely troubling activities," the release reads.

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The release also features multiple images of passages from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita written in black ink across different parts of a female's body, including her upper body, lower extremity, pelvis, and back. Lolita recounts the account of a young girl who was manipulated by a middle-aged literature professor.

A particular quote from the work inscribed across a woman's upper body says, "Lolita's name: the end of the tongue making a journey of three steps down the roof of the mouth to alight, at three, on the teeth".

The release also contains a number of photographs of women's travel documents and ID papers from countries globally, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

A large portion of the details on the documents, such as names and dates of birth, is censored but the panel said in a statement that the passports pertain to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were engaging".

An additional photo shows Epstein sitting at a workstation closely surrounded by three female figures whose identities have been censored - one individual has her palm on Epstein's torso under his clothing, and another individual is crouching to view a adjacent laptop. Epstein can be seen to be helping the third put on a wristband.

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A further photo made public is a screenshot of digital messages from an unnamed individual who says they have been provided "a number of girls" and are requesting "$one thousand dollars for each individual".

Photo Publication Arrives Before DOJ Cut-off

The committee has thousands of photographs in its possession from the Epstein property, which are "at once disturbing and everyday," its statement on Thursday clarified.

The House Oversight Committee first subpoenaed the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York correctional facility in 2019 while awaiting trial on accusations of sex trafficking, in August.

The photos and records the Epstein estate's representatives gave to the panel are separate from what is often termed "Epstein-related records". Those files are records within the DOJ's control related to its own investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the recently passed law, which President Trump made law recently, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to publish its documents. The extent of what's contained in the DOJ's files is not publicly known, and it's likely that much of the material will be extensively obscured, similar to Congressional releases