Bill Gates has said he wishes he had never met Jeffrey Epstein, breaking his silence as renewed scrutiny of the disgraced financier’s circle spills into the public lives of some of the world’s most powerful figures.
Speaking on Australia’s 9News on Wednesday, the Microsoft founder said his contact with Epstein was a mistake he deeply regrets.
“Every minute I spent with him, I regret,” Gates said. “I apologise that I did that.”
His remarks came a day after his former wife, Melinda French Gates, spoke candidly about the strain Epstein’s shadow placed on their marriage. In an interview with NPR, she said the relationship raised troubling questions that her ex-husband must answer himself.
“For me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up,” she said on NPR’s Wild Card podcast. “It brings back memories of some very painful times in my marriage.”
The renewed attention follows the release of fresh material linked to Epstein, the late financier whose web of elite contacts has continued to draw scrutiny years after his death in custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Among the claims circulating is an allegation that Gates concealed a sexually transmitted infection from his wife after encounters involving Epstein.
Gates’s office swiftly rejected that assertion as false. On television, Gates went further, dismissing the allegation as fabrication and suggesting Epstein may have been attempting to smear him.
“Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent,” Gates said. “The email is false. I don’t know what his thinking was. Was he trying to attack me in some way?”
Gates said he first met Epstein in 2011 and saw him several times to discuss funding for scientific and global health projects. He denied any wrongdoing and said he never visited Epstein’s private island or engaged in any inappropriate conduct.
“The focus was always that he knew very wealthy people and claimed he could bring money into global health,” Gates said. “In retrospect, that went nowhere. It was a dead end.”
Melinda French Gates, however, made clear that the matter remains unresolved for her. While stopping short of direct accusations, she said the questions raised by Epstein’s associations were not hers to answer.
“Those questions are for those people,” she said, “and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me.”
The Gateses divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage. French Gates said she has since rebuilt her life and found peace away from what she described as “the muck” of that period. Yet she spoke with visible emotion about Epstein’s victims, calling their experiences “beyond heartbreaking”.
“No girl should ever be put in the situation they were put in,” she said. “I remember being those ages. I remember my daughters being those ages.”
The fallout is no longer confined to personal reckonings. In Washington, Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace said she had asked the House oversight committee to compel Gates to testify about his ties to Epstein.
“I have questions for Bill Gates about Epstein,” Mace wrote on X, saying she supported French Gates’s call for accountability.
The committee is already examining Epstein’s network. Earlier this week, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose names also appear in the files, said they would cooperate with investigators after initially declining to testify.
About the Author
