Bill Gates has publicly addressed his connection to Jeffrey Epstein for the first time since new allegations emerged, saying he regrets the relationship, while his former wife Melinda French Gates suggested her ex-husband must answer lingering questions about the association.
The Microsoft co-founder, 70, broke his silence Wednesday in an interview with Australian broadcaster 9News, calling claims in recently released documents “false” and suggesting Epstein may have been attempting extortion or character damage.
The allegations, which surfaced in the latest batch of documents related to Epstein’s activities, included assertions that Gates concealed a sexually transmitted infection from his wife. Gates’s representatives immediately dismissed these as “absolutely absurd and completely false.”
In the television interview, Gates addressed a 2013 email purportedly written by Epstein to himself that made the claims. “That email was never sent. The email is false,” Gates stated. “I don’t know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way? Every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that.”
Gates explained he first met Epstein in 2011 and had several dinners with him to explore potential investments in scientific initiatives. He denied visiting Epstein’s Caribbean estate, where numerous alleged abuses occurred, and said he had no inappropriate contact with women.
“The focus was always, he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. In retrospect, that was a dead end,” Gates said. “I was foolish to spend time with him.”
His remarks came one day after Melinda French Gates spoke to NPR’s Wild Card podcast about the ongoing revelations. The 61-year-old philanthropist described the situation as deeply personal and painful.
“For me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” she said. “Whatever questions remain there of what—I can’t even begin to know all of it—those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me.”
The couple’s 27-year marriage ended in divorce in 2021, a split now seen partly through the lens of the Epstein scandal that continues to reverberate more than six years after the financier’s death in federal custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
In excerpts from her NPR interview, set to air in full Thursday, French Gates called the document releases a “reckoning as a society” and expressed compassion for Epstein’s victims. “No girl should ever be put in the situation they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. It’s beyond heartbreaking,” she said.
Describing her current life, French Gates said she had “moved on” from a marriage she needed to leave and was now “in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life. I’m so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”
When asked about her reaction to learning of the allegations against her former husband, she said she felt “just unbelievable sadness” and hoped for justice for the victims, calling their experiences “unimaginable.”
The controversy has attracted political attention, with South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace announcing Wednesday she had written to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer requesting that Gates be subpoenaed. “I have questions for Bill Gates about Epstein,” Mace wrote on X.
Earlier this week, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose names also appear in released documents, agreed to testify before the committee, just days before a planned vote to hold them in contempt for initially declining.
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