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Lolita quotes, women’s IDs: Democrats release dozens of new Epstein images
Updated ,first published
Washington: Congressional Democrats have released dozens of new images from the estate of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a day before the US Justice Department is required by law to release unclassified files from its investigation of the disgraced financier.
The latest batch of images includes close-ups of sentences from Lolita, a book about a man’s grooming of a 12-year-old girl, scribbled in black ink across different parts of an unidentified woman’s body.
“Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth,” a passage from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, is written on a woman’s chest.
“She was Lola in slacks,” is written on a woman’s hip.
“She was Dolly at school,” is written on a woman’s neck and “She was Dolores on the dotted line,” is written on a woman’s back.
Another picture of a woman’s foot with the book in the background has a quote that reads “Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.”
Epstein’s private jet, which he used to fly underage girls to his private Island, Little St James, was nicknamed the “Lolita Express”, London’s Telegraph reported.
The 68 photos are among some 95,000 the Epstein estate released to the House oversight committee.
Other images include redacted identification cards of women – from Russia, Morocco, Italy, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Ukraine and Lithuania – and a late-night text thread about sending girls for someone identified as “j” for $1000 each.
Another shows a container of phenazopyridine tablets, used to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs).
Last week, oversight Democrats released 19 photos, including some featuring now-President Donald Trump, who dismissed the images as “no big deal”.
Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, professor and political activist Noam Chomsky and former Trump aide Steve Bannon are pictured in the latest images.
Representatives for Gates, Chomsky and Bannon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Committee Democrats said the images released on Thursday (Friday AEDT) “were selected to provide the public with transparency into a representative sample of the photos” and “to provide insights into Epstein’s network and his extremely disturbing activities”.
Democrats said they had thousands more images, “both graphic and mundane”, which they are continuing to analyse.
“Oversight Democrats will continue to release photographs and documents from the Epstein estate to provide transparency for the American people,” said California Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the oversight committee.
“As we approach the deadline for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these new images raise more questions about what exactly the Department of Justice has in its possession. We must end this White House cover-up, and the DOJ must release the Epstein files now.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the latest release changes nothing.
“President Trump has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files and his administration has delivered,” she said in a statement.
Reuters
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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