Bill Gates continued to meet with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein after wife Melinda Gates raised concerns over their meeting in 2013, reports say.
Melinda Gates, a global advocate for women and girls, had told her husband she was uncomfortable with Epstein after the couple met him together in 2013, a former employee of the Gates Foundation told the Wall Street Journal. Bill Gates and some employees of the Gates Foundation continued a relationship with Epstein despite her concerns, the source said.
Melinda Gates had been in discussions with divorce lawyers since October 2019, around the same time when Bill Gates’s ties to Epstein became public, reports say.
On May 3, the billionaire couple announced they were ending their marriage. In a joint statement posted on Twitter, they said, “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
Melinda Gates, 56, had consulted with divorce lawyers roughly two years before she filed for divorce from Bill Gates, saying their marriage was “irretrievably broken,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing documents it reviewed and people familiar with the matter.
According to documents reviewed by the Journal, Melinda Gates and her advisers held a number of calls in October 2019 when The New York Times reported that Bill Gates had met with Epstein on numerous occasions. Gates once stayed late into the night at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, the Times reported.
Bill Gates had previously played down his relationship with Epstein, telling the Journal in 2019 that he had met him but "didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him."
In 2011, Bill Gates instructed a team to meet Epstein at his townhouse to discuss philanthropic fundraising, The New York Times reported. Epstein told the people there that his conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl was no worse than “stealing a bagel,” the report notes, citing two people who were there.
“His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Gates wrote about Epstein in a 2011 email to colleagues. His spokeswoman says he was “referring only to the unique décor of the Epstein residence.”
Bill Gates and Epstein remained in contact. At one point in 2013, Gates flew on Epstein’s jet from New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, according to a flight manifest. Gates’s spokeswoman claims Gates, who owns his own private jet, didn’t know it was Epstein’s plane.
Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Bill Gates, said in 2019 that the software mogul and Epstein had met multiple times to discuss philanthropy.
“Bill Gates regrets ever meeting with Epstein and recognizes it was an error in judgment to do so,” Arnold said at the time.
Epstein reportedly died in jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges related to sex trafficking.
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