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The House investigative committee has made public a set of roughly 70 images obtained from the property of former found guilty sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This constitutes the third such publication from a cache of more than 95,000 photos the panel has acquired from Epstein's holdings. It contains pictures of passages from the book Lolita scrawled across a female's body, and censored pictures of female overseas passports.

This disclosure arrives just hours before the 19 December deadline for the Department of Justice to disclose every documents associated with its probe into Epstein.

"These images raise additional inquiries about precisely what the DOJ has in its possession," said the senior Democrat of the panel, Robert Garcia.

What is in the Photos Disclosed

Some of the photos released on this week show Epstein speaking with scholar and advocate Noam Chomsky inside a private plane; Bill Gates standing beside a female whose features is redacted; Steve Bannon seated at a desk across from Epstein, and former Alphabet president Sergey Brin at a dinner event.

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These are the most recent high-net-worth, powerful figures to be photographed in Epstein's estate photos published by the committee - earlier published pictures also include US President Donald Trump and past 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 photos is not proof of any misconduct, and several of the pictured figures have said they were not involved in Epstein's criminal activity.

In a statement issued alongside the photo release, Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee noted the Epstein property holders did not provide explanatory details or timings for the pictures.

"Photos were selected to furnish the general populace with transparency into a typical cross-section of the images obtained from the property, and to offer insights into Epstein's circle and his extremely disturbing activities," the release states.

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The publication also features a number of photos of excerpts from the Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita written in ink across various areas of a woman's body, like her upper body, foot, hipbone, and back. Lolita tells the account of a minor who was exploited by a adult literature professor.

An example of a quote from the work scrawled across a female's chest reads, "Lolita: the tip of the tongue traveling of three steps down the palate to alight, at three, on the teeth".

There are also a number of photos of female travel documents and official papers from states around the world, like Lithuania, Russia, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

Committee

The majority of the data on the IDs, including identities and dates of birth, is censored but the committee said in a statement that the passports pertain to "women whom Jeffrey Epstein and his conspirators were engaging".

An additional photograph features Epstein positioned at a table closely in the company of three female figures whose features have been obscured - one has her hand on Epstein's upper body under his shirt, and another individual is crouching to look at a adjacent computer. Epstein seems to be aiding the third put on a bracelet.

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Another photo released is a capture of text messages from an unnamed individual who says they have been supplied "some girls" and are demanding "$one thousand dollars per girl".

Photo Release Arrives Prior to DOJ Due Date

The panel has many thousands of images in its custody from the Epstein estate, which are "both graphic and mundane," its press release on recently explained.

The House Oversight Committee first issued a subpoena to the estate of Epstein, who died in a New York correctional facility in 2019 while facing trial on charges of human trafficking, in August.

The photographs and files the Epstein property submitted to the body are separate from what is often called "the Epstein documents". Those are papers under the Department of Justice's possession connected to its own investigation into Epstein.

Pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed into law recently, the DOJ has until the date of 19 December to disclose its files. The full nature of what is included in the DOJ's records is not publicly known, and it's expected that a large amount of the content will be heavily obscured, similar to the committee's materials