Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Friday released 19 photos of Jeffrey Epstein with Donald Trump and other prominent officials and public figures, a small portion of what they said were thousands of images recently provided by Epstein’s estate.
Committee members said the panel received more than 95,000 photos from the estate of the convicted sex offender. The initial batch of released images — several of which have previously been made public — also includes photos of former president Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, filmmaker Woody Allen and conservative media figure Stephen K. Bannon.
The photos are undated and lack other context such as where they were taken. Epstein does not appear in many of them. Several are taken on private jets, but it is not known whose airplanes are depicted. Four show sexual items with no people pictured. Democrats did not say what they believe to be the significance of those pictures.
House Republicans criticized the Democratic members of the committee for “cherry-picking photos and making targeted redactions to create a false narrative about President Trump.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the photo release. No evidence has surfaced of wrongdoing by Trump, who has said that he had “no idea” about Epstein’s criminal behavior. Clinton, Gates, Allen and Bannon also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a charge of solicitating sex with underaged girls. In 2019, federal prosecutors brought sex-trafficking charges against him. He pleaded not guilty and died months later by suicide in federal custody while awaiting trial.
Trump has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Florida, and that they had a falling-out in the mid-2000s, which Trump has attributed to a real estate deal and to Epstein hiring employees away from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. A White House spokeswoman said last month that Epstein was ejected from the club for “for being a creep” to female workers there.
In addition to its subpoena to the Epstein estate, a subcommittee of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department to compel the release of files from its investigation of Epstein. The committee has released several tranches of documents and photos in recent months.
A batch last month of about 20,000 pages included emails from the financier discussing his onetime friendship with Trump. In one of those emails, Epstein alleges that Trump “knew about the girls.” Trump has denied knowing about the solicitation of underage prostitution before Epstein’s 2008 plea deal, and he reiterated that to reporters after the emails’ release. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time that the emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”
A separate bipartisan push in Congress last month resulted in Trump signing legislation directing the Justice Department to release files related to the investigation by Dec. 19. The DOJ has not responded to questions about how it plans to comply with the new law.
“It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said Friday. “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”
Garcia told reporters that the committee received the 95,000 photographs Thursday night and had only gone through about 25,000. He said they would release more photos “in the days and weeks ahead.”
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