{"id":499361,"date":"2026-02-25T21:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/499361\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T21:29:09","slug":"bill-gates-apologizes-to-foundation-staff-for-jeffrey-epstein-ties-bill-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/499361\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates apologizes to foundation staff for Jeffrey Epstein ties | Bill Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Gates<\/a> apologized to staff of his foundation for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> and admitted to two affairs but stated he did not participate in the convicted sex offender\u2019s crimes, according to a Wall Street Journal<\/a> report.<\/p>\n

At a town hall on Tuesday, Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, said it was a \u201chuge mistake to spend time with Epstein\u201d and to bring Gates Foundation executives to meetings with Epstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cI apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made,\u201d Gates said, according to a recording reviewed by the Journal.<\/p>\n

Gates\u2019s relationship with Epstein has received increased scrutiny<\/a> recently due to the justice department\u2019s release of the files that included emails Epstein wrote to himself in which he claimed that Gates had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and requested antibiotics to surreptitiously give to his then-wife, Melinda. Gates has denied this allegation.<\/p>\n

The files also contained images of Gates with women whose faces were redacted. He said during the town hall that Epstein had asked him to take the photos with his assistants.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be clear, I never spent any time with victims, the women around him,\u201d said Gates, whose foundation is one of the world\u2019s leading global health philanthropies.<\/p>\n

Still, the men\u2019s relationship was definitely \u201cthe opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation\u201d, he said. \u201cAnd our work is very reputational sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

A foundation spokesperson told the Journal that the billionaire holds town halls twice a year and \u201cspoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Gates said he started meeting with Epstein in 2011. Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.<\/p>\n

Gates said at the town hall that he was aware of some \u201c18-month thing\u201d, referring to Epstein\u2019s sentence, that had limited Epstein\u2019s travel but didn\u2019t properly check his background.<\/p>\n

While Gates claimed that he never spent time with Epstein\u2019s victims, he did say that he had an affair with a \u201cRussian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Epstein had tried to extort Gates over his alleged affair with the bridge player, Mila Antonova, after he could not convince the philanthropist to join a multibillion charity fund he tried to establish, the Journal reported<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tone of the message was that Epstein knew about the affair and could expose it,\u201d the Journal reported.<\/p>\n

Gates said during the town hall that Epstein spoke about the \u201cintimate relationship he had with a lot of billionaires, particularly Wall Street billionaires\u201d, and that he could help raise money for causes like global health.<\/p>\n

The fact that other prestigious figures attended their meetings \u201cmade it easier for me to feel like this was a normalized situation\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Gates apologized to staff of his foundation for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and admitted to two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-499361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}