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The Congressional oversight panel has made public a batch of approximately 70 images obtained from the property of deceased convicted individual convicted of sex crimes Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the latest in a series of release from a larger collection of more than 95,000 images the panel has acquired from Epstein's property. It contains pictures of quotes from the book Lolita inscribed across a woman's body, and censored images of women's foreign passports.

This action comes mere hours before the 19th of December cut-off for the Justice Department to make public all records connected to its probe into Epstein.

"These latest photographs raise further questions about precisely what the Department of Justice has in its custody," said the Democratic lead of the panel, Robert Garcia.

What's in the Photographs Released

A number of the photographs published on recently show Epstein conversing with professor and activist Noam Chomsky on a private jet; Bill Gates standing alongside a woman whose face is obscured; Steve Bannon sitting at a table across from Epstein, and previous Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner gathering.

Committee

These are the newest wealthy, prominent figures to be seen in Epstein estate images published by the House Oversight Committee - formerly published photos also show US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton, as well as director Woody Allen, previous US treasury secretary Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Mountbatton-Windsor, and others.

Being pictured in the photographs is does not constitute evidence of any misconduct, and many of the photographed men have said they were in no way participating in Epstein's illegal activity.

In a statement accompanying the photo disclosure, Democratic members on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein estate's representatives did not supply context or timeframes for the photographs.

"Photographs were chosen to furnish the American people with openness into a illustrative selection of the photographs received from the estate, and to offer insights into Epstein's network and his profoundly troubling activities," the announcement says.

Investigative Body

The disclosure also features a number of images of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita inscribed in ink across several locations of a female's body, such as her chest, foot, hip, and spine. Lolita tells the tale of a young girl who was manipulated by a adult literature professor.

A particular excerpt from the novel scrawled across a woman's upper body reads, "Lolita: the point of the tongue traveling of three steps down the mouth to land, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a collection of images of female identification and official papers from nations around the world, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Investigative Body

A large portion of the data on the documents, including names and birth dates, is censored but the House Oversight Committee stated in a statement that the travel documents belong to "individuals whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates were involved with".

An additional image depicts Epstein seated at a desk in close proximity surrounded by three women whose features have been censored - one individual has her hand on Epstein's torso under his clothing, and a second is crouching to look at a adjacent device. Epstein can be seen to be aiding the final person fasten a bracelet.

Oversight Panel

An additional photograph disclosed is a image of SMS messages from an unknown sender who says they have been supplied "some girls" and are asking for "$$1,000 per female".

Image Release Occurs Ahead of DOJ Deadline

The committee has thousands of photographs in its custody from the Epstein holdings, which are "both disturbing and everyday," its statement on Thursday explained.

The House Oversight Committee first issued a subpoena to the property of Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while pending legal proceedings on charges of sex trafficking crimes, in August.

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

Pursuant to the recently passed law, which President Trump signed into law recently, the DOJ has a deadline of 19 December to release its documents. The full nature of the contents included in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's likely that a large amount of the material will be heavily redacted, similar to House Oversight Committee materials