According to Breitbart, the billionaire philanthropist, whose name appears repeatedly in the recently released trove of more than three million pages of Epstein-related documents, is now portraying his dealings with Epstein as a naïve misjudgment rather than a sustained relationship with a man whose predatory behavior was widely known in elite circles.
“I was foolish to spend time with him,” Gates said, reiterating what many critics view as unconvincing denials about what appeared to be a close and convenient association with Epstein. “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, and I was foolish to spend time with him,” Gates said of Epstein during an interview with 9 News Australia on Wednesday.
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“I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him,” Gates — who broke his silence for the first time since the release of more than three million pages of Epstein documents on Friday — added. His comments come as public scrutiny intensifies over why so many powerful figures, including tech titans and political elites, were willing to overlook Epstein’s reputation while benefiting from his connections.
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Pressed directly on whether the latest allegations in the Epstein files about him are true, the Microsoft co-founder tried to dismiss the matter by casting doubt on Epstein’s own writings. “Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false,” Gates claimed, sidestepping the broader question of why his name appears so frequently in the documents at all.
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“So I don’t know what his thinking was there,” Gates continued. “It just reminds me, every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that.” The repeated emphasis on regret may play well with sympathetic media outlets, but it does little to address why a man of Gates’s resources and influence chose to associate with a convicted sex offender years after Epstein’s first conviction.
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Gates added that he first met Epstein in 2011, and “only went to dinners” with the convicted sex offender. Those meetups — which the billionaire says mainly involved discussions about business opportunities — eventually ended in 2014, he insisted.
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“It’s factually true that I was only at dinners,” Gates said. “I never went to the island. I never met any women.” “So, the more that comes out, the more clear it will be that — although, at the time, it was a mistake — it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior,” he added, framing his conduct as a purely professional miscalculation rather than moral complicity.
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As Breitbart News reported, the latest release of the Epstein files includes a 2013 email from the disgraced financier and sex predator to himself about Bill Gates in which Epstein claims the Microsoft co-founder caught an STD after “sex with Russians girls” and wanted to slip antibiotics to his wife instead of telling her. A spokesperson for Gates responded to the email scandal, stating, “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false.”
Melinda Gates, meanwhile, reacted to the Epstein emails by saying her ex-husband and other Epstein associates “need to answer to those things.”
With more Epstein documents still being examined and the public demanding accountability from global elites, Gates’s carefully worded regrets and categorical denials are unlikely to quiet questions about why so many in the ruling class, from tech billionaires to political power brokers, found Epstein’s company so useful for so long.
