Democratic legislators have published dozens of new photographs recovered from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, timing the release just days before the Trump administration’s Department of Justice faces a deadline to disclose its own files on the convicted sex trafficker.
The newly released collection of undated images features Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and New York Times opinion writer David Brooks, per a report by the Financial Times.
Also appearing in the photographs are Steve Bannon, who served as a senior strategist during Donald Trump’s presidency, alongside linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky and director Woody Allen.
The House oversight committee’s Democratic members released these materials on Thursday, following an earlier disclosure less than a week prior that included images of Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and Lawrence Summers, who led the Treasury Department under Clinton.
These latest photographs underscore the extensive reach of Epstein’s social and professional circles, which spanned the technology sector, political establishment, corporate world, and entertainment industry.
Among those pictured in Thursday’s release were Harvard professor Martin Nowak, illusionist David Blaine, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, onetime YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, billionaire businessman Thomas Pritzker, and Miroslav Lajčák, a Slovak diplomat who previously presided over the UN General Assembly.
Attempts to contact Nowak, Lajčák, Pritzker, and Blaine were unsuccessful. Kamangar and Barak could not be reached because their contact details were not publicly accessible.
The photographs carry no implication that any of the prominent individuals shown committed wrongdoing.
Beyond the photographs of public figures, the release included screenshots of text message exchanges, scanned pages from Epstein’s passport, and a disturbing series of close-up images showing portions of an unidentified woman’s body inscribed with passages from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a novel depicting a professor’s sexual exploitation of a 12-year-old girl.
The publication of these materials will likely intensify demands for the administration to release its own Epstein-related documents. Six years after his death, Epstein continues to fuel widespread speculation and conspiracy theories.
Scrutiny of Epstein’s relationships with wealthy and powerful individuals, including Trump, has triggered significant political controversy in recent months, damaging the reputations of high-profile politicians and business executives on both sides of the Atlantic.
Trump has publicly stated that he and Epstein maintained a friendship that ended more than 20 years ago. The president has categorically rejected any involvement in Epstein’s illegal activities.
Nevertheless, Trump has faced ongoing questions about his association with the financier and about how federal authorities have managed Epstein-related cases. For months, Trump and Republican congressional leaders prevented the publication of Justice Department materials concerning Epstein before the president reversed course last month and supported legislation mandating their release.
House Democrats indicated they obtained 95,000 images from the Epstein estate through their investigation into the financier. Epstein died in his prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking.
The legislators stated Thursday that the photographs released thus 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.”
Representative Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, pledged that lawmakers would continue publishing materials from the Epstein estate “to provide transparency for the American people.”
Thursday’s disclosures arrived one day before Attorney General Pam Bondi must publish federal files related to Epstein, following Trump’s signing last month of legislation requiring the materials be made public.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act granted the Justice Department 30 days to release its Epstein files, including evidence collected during multiple criminal and civil investigations into the financier and his associates.
The legislation permits the Justice Department to withhold files that might compromise ongoing federal investigations or raise national security issues, prompting concerns among some legislators that significant portions could be redacted.
Brin, Brooks, Chomsky, and Gates did not respond to requests for comment. Allen could not be immediately contacted.
