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Democratic lawmakers have released dozens of new photos from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, as the deadline nears for Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to release its files on the late sex offender.
The new tranche of undated images includes photos of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and New York Times columnist David Brooks. The president’s one-time top strategist Steve Bannon is also pictured with the disgraced financier, as are public intellectual Noam Chomsky and filmmaker Woody Allen.
Thursday’s disclosures from Democrats on the House oversight committee come less than a week after an earlier batch that included photos of Trump, former president Bill Clinton and Clinton’s one-time Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers.
There was no suggestion that the public figures pictured in the images released in the latest tranche had committed any wrongdoing.
The new images are likely to pile pressure on the administration to hand over its materials relating to Epstein, who six years after his death remains a lightning rod for speculation and conspiracy theories.
Questions about Epstein’s ties to rich and powerful figures, including Trump, have ignited a political firestorm in recent months and led to significant fallout for high-profile politicians and business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.
Trump has acknowledged that he and Epstein were once friends but said they fell out more than two decades ago. He has vehemently denied any involvement in Epstein’s criminal activities.
But the president has faced persistent questions about his relationship with the disgraced financier, as well as the federal government’s handling of cases relating to Epstein. Trump and top Republicans on Capitol Hill for months blocked publication of DoJ files relating to Epstein, before the president made a U-turn last month and endorsed a bill compelling the release of the materials.
House Democrats said they had received 95,000 pictures from the Epstein estate as part of lawmakers’ investigation into the financier. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in his prison cell, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The lawmakers on Thursday said the photos released so far were “selected to provide the public with transparency into a representative sample of the photos received from the estate, and to provide insights into Epstein’s network and his extremely disturbing activities”.
Robert Garcia, the committee’s top Democrat, said lawmakers would continue to release materials from the Epstein estate “to provide transparency for the American people”.
Thursday’s disclosures came one day before a deadline for US attorney-general Pam Bondi to publish the federal government’s files relating to Epstein, after Trump last month signed into law a bill forcing the materials to be made public.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act gave the DoJ 30 days to release its files on Epstein, including evidence gathered during multiple criminal and civil investigations into the disgraced financier and his associates.
The bill allowed the DoJ to withhold files that could jeopardise active federal investigations or pose national security concerns — raising concerns among some lawmakers that any disclosures could be heavily redacted.
Microsoft, Alphabet, Chomsky and Brooks did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Allen could not immediately be reached for comment.
Additional reporting by Rafe Uddin in San Francisco
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