Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a batch of 68 photos obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, one day before the deadline for the Trump administration to release a much larger group of Epstein files.
The photos come from a trove of 95,000 images the committee received last week, the Democrats said. The release includes images of lines from the novel “Lolita” written on a person’s body; various travel documents; a screenshot of text messages about an 18-year-old from Russia and more. The photos can be accessed here.
The Democrats released several dozen photos last week, showing various high-profile figures including President Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, Gates and others. Neither batch of photos implicates any of those pictured in Epstein’s crimes.
I’ve read the novel. Humbert is a pathetic old man who destroys Lolita’s life for a fling on the road. The girl goes from a charmed upper middle class life before the family meets Humbert to the death of her mother, debasement and abuse at the hands of Humbert, and finally poverty, poor education, and bearing children out of wedlock. Lolita’s life is ruined in the aftermath, much like Epstein’s real victims. Nabokov did not write a sympathetic treatment of child abuse in Lolita, nor is Humbert a hero in the story.