Bill Gates has said that he made a “huge mistake” by being friends with Jeffrey Epstein. He told colleagues at his charitable foundation that he had romances with two Russian women but denied being involved in the crimes of the disgraced financier.
The US Justice Department produced records that showed personal ties, illegal money deals, and private images with convicted sex offender Epstein. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is one of the well-known people mentioned in these documents, according to AFP.
The Wall Street Journal listened to a recording of a town hall meeting yesterday with Gates Foundation staff. Gates said he was sorry that his association with Epstein had an impact on the operations of his charity.
He said, “It was a big mistake to spend time with Epstein” and to also bring Gates Foundation executives to meetings with him.
“I’m sorry to everyone else who got involved because of the mistake I made.”
In a draft email that the Justice Department made public, Epstein accused Gates of cheating on his wife. He said that his relationship with Gates included “helping Bill get drugs to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls” and “facilitating his illegal affairs with married women.”
Gates, who is 70, told the town hall that he had two affairs.
He added, “I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player I met at bridge events and another with a Russian nuclear physicist I met through work.”
But he said he had nothing to do with the victims of Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while waiting to go to trial for sex trafficking teenage girls.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Gates told the town hall, “I didn’t see anything illegal.”
The tech giant said he started dating Epstein in 2011, three years after the financier admitted to trying to get a minor to have sex with him.
Gates said he knew about a “18-month thing” that kept Epstein from traveling, but he didn’t look into his past.
He added that his then-wife Melinda was worried about Epstein in 2013, but he kept seeing her for at least another year.
Gates told workers, “Knowing what I know now makes it a hundred times worse, not only because of his past crimes, but also because it’s clear that he was still behaving badly.”
Our reporter asked the Gates Foundation for a comment on Gates’s comments, but they didn’t react right away.
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