Mega billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once said that his divorce from ex-wife Melinda French Gates was at the top of his list of greatest regrets. New revelations from the latest dump of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein might include more of those regrets.
Might is the key word, since Gates refutes some of what is indicated in the massive release of emails and other documents. He responded to the dump after French Gates addressed it in a recent interview.
“Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false,” Gates told 9News in Australia.
Now, what were those allegedly “false” implications about Gates included in the dump? Multiple outlets have noted that files imply that Epstein – who was accused of abusing girls as young as 14 years old in an indictment filed the same year he died in a Manhattan jail cell – procured women for Gates and that Gates got a sexually transmitted infection from one of the women.
Additionally, they imply that Gates was trying to get drugs to treat himself and secretly treat French Gates, who he was still married to at the time. In an interview with NPR’s Wild Card podcast, she said: “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,” regarding the new file dump.
“We know, and this has been out there in public for a while, that part of the reason that Bill and Melinda Gates got divorced was her discomfort with her husband’s relationship with Epstein,” said David Enrich, business investigations editor for The New York Times, in an interview with Slate this week. “And while we’ve never really had the full gory details and what that’s entailed, it’s obviously been a subject of informed speculation.”
French Gates has called Epstein “evil personified” in the past. During her interview with NPR she called the release of the files “reckoning as a society,” and said that his treatment of women and girls was “beyond heartbreaking.”
“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,” French Gates said.
Regarding the claims about her ex-husband trying to secretly give her antibiotics, French Gates told NPR she felt “just unbelievable sadness.”
“I’m able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, ‘My God, how did that happen to those girls?’ I hope there’s some justice for those now women. What they went through is unimaginable,” French Gates added.
It doesn’t seem that she has the same feelings of regret over the marriage that her ex-husband expressed. French Gates told NPR that she has “moved on” and is “happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”
Gates himself admitted to meeting with Epstein in a 2021 interview with PBS. He told PBS NewsHour journalist Judy Woodruff that he met with the financier in the hopes of raising money for global health initiatives.
“You know, I had dinners with him,” said Gates said. “Ah, I regret doing that.”
In his recent interview with 9News, Gates said he doesn’t “know what his thinking was there,” regarding the Epstein email implying Gates got an STI.
“Was he trying to attack me in some way?” Gates mused.
Per 9News, Gates said he met Epstein in 2011. He admitted again to having several dinners with Epstein over a three-year period but said he never went to Epstein’s infamous island or had relations with women Epstein knew.
“Every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that,” he added.
In addition to the email implying Gates got an STI, another apparently from Virgin Group founder Richard Branson mentioned the Microsoft mogul.
“I think if Bill Gates was willing to say that you've been a brilliant advisor to him,” Branson allegedly wrote, while seeming to give Epstein public relations advice. “That you slipped up many years ago by sleeping with a 17 ½ year old woman and were punished for it, that you’ve more than learnt your lesson and have done nothing that’s against the law since and, yes, as a single man you seem to have a penchant for women. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Anyway something along those lines.”
Enrich said he wasn’t surprised to see Gates pop up again in the Epstein files, which have been released thanks to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“The thing I’ll caution about here is – and I’m not at all defending Gates or his apparent conduct, and it is entirely possible that those emails were true and accurately reflected what Epstein and people like Gates did – but it is possible that Epstein is a liar and an embellisher and an expert in using threats and leverage to get what he wants with powerful people,” Enrich said. “And so it is not outside the realm of possibility that Epstein was exaggerating or twisting the truth.”