Update: After publication of this piece, House Oversight Democrats disabled comments on the photos. The original article follows below.
Thursday afternoon House Democrats publicly released a new trove of photographs they’ve obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein via Dropbox. They left the comments on so anyone who is signed into Dropbox and browsing the material can leave behind their thoughts.
Given that the investigation into Epstein is one of the most closely followed cases in the world and a subject of endless conspiracy theories, and that the committee released the trove of photographs with no context, it’s not surprising that people immediately began commenting on the photographs.
“Really punchable face,” BedeScarlet—whose avatar is Cloud from Final Fantasy VII—said above a picture of New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks, who wrote a column about his boredom with the Epstein case in November, attended a dinner with Epstein in 2011 and appears in two photographs in this new document dump.
“Noam Chomsky,” Alya Colours (a frequent Epstein dropbox commenter) said below a photograph of the linguist talking to Epstein on a plane. Below this there is a little prompt from Dropbox asking me to “join the conversation” next to a smiley face.
In another picture, director Woody Allen is bundled up to his eyes in a heavy coat while Epstein side hugs him. “Yep, I’d know that face anywhere,” Susan Brown commented.
Among the pictures is a closeup of a prescription bottle labeled Phenazopyridine. “This is a medication used to treat pain from urinary tract infections,” Rebecca Stinton added, helpfully, in the comments.
“The fuck were they doing all that math for?” BedeScarlet said next to a picture of Epstein in front of a whiteboard covered in equations.
“Shit probably tastes like ass,” he added to a picture of Epstein cooking something in a kitchen.
There are darker and weird photographs in this collection of images that, as of this writing, do not yet have comments. There’s a pair of box springs in an unfinished room lit by the sun. There is a map of Little St James indicating where Epstein wants various buildings constructed. Bill Gates is shown in two photos standing next to women with their faces blocked out.
And then there are the Lolita pictures. A woman’s foot sits in the foreground, a worn annotated copy of Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita in the background. “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet teen in one sock,” is written on the foot, a quote from the novel.
These photos are followed by a series of pictures of passports with the information redacted. Some are from Ukraine. There’s one from South Africa and another from the Czech Republic.
The House Democrats allowing the public to comment on these photos is funny and it’s unclear if intentional or a mistake. It’s also a continuation of the just-get-out-there approach when they have published other material, with it sometimes being in unsorted caches that readers then have to dig through. The only grand revelation in the new material is that Brooks was present at a dinner with Epstein in 2011.
“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner,” a Times spokesperson told Semafor’s Max Tani.
House Oversight Democrats did not immediately return 404 Media’s request for comment.
