Pressure on DOJ

House Democrats on the Oversight Committee have escalated pressure on the Justice Department by releasing additional photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate days before a statutory deadline for DOJ disclosures. The images, made public on December 18, underline a strategic choice by Democrats to publish material as it arrives rather than in consolidated batches, amplifying political tension as a Friday deadline approaches under a transparency law passed last month.

Democrats said the estate provided no context, dates, or attribution, and that lawmakers are still reviewing more than 95,000 images turned overover to the committee last week.

New Photographs

The photographs include a Ukrainian passport with some information redacted, philosopher Noam Chomsky seated on a plane with Epstein, and Bill Gates posing with a woman whose face was obscured by the panel.

One image shows a screenshot of text messages discussing the sending of girls, including a quoted price of “1000$ per girl” and a description listing “18 y old,” physical measurements, weight, a check mark next to the Schengen area, and a “departure city.” The participants in the exchange are unidentified, and the panel provided no contextual information about when or where the messages were sent.

Other photographs include a woman’s foot bearing a handwritten quotation from Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” a novel centered on the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl. Democrats said they redacted personally identifiable information of victims and survivors in all releases.

Gates and Chomsky have previously acknowledged knowing Epstein and have appeared in earlier estate images.