For the first time under oath, Bill Gates sat before Congress and acknowledged what tabloids had long speculated — he had cheated on his wife, Melinda, and the man who knew about it was Jeffrey Epstein.
The revelation came Wednesday during a grilling by the House Oversight Committee, where the 70-year-old tech titan delivered a prepared statement confirming the affairs while insisting they had no connection to his dealings with the disgraced financier.
“These affairs had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein, but they were painful for my family,” Gates told lawmakers, reading from his prepared remarks.
What followed was a portrait of a billionaire who says he walked into a trap — one built on promises of philanthropic access and slowly tightened by a man experts now regard as one of America’s most prolific sexual predators.
Gates told the committee that Epstein first entered his orbit in 2011, dangling the prospect of channeling billions of dollars toward global public health causes. Gates said he accepted the introduction — a decision he now calls one of the worst of his life.
What Gates says he did not fully grasp at the time was that Epstein was already a convicted sex offender. The financier had pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was a registered offender when Gates shook his hand.
“I accepted the introduction without applying the scrutiny I should have,” Gates admitted to the committee.
The relationship, Gates testified, lasted three years before he cut all contact in 2014.
But by then, according to Gates, the damage was done — Epstein had gathered enough personal intelligence to attempt what Gates described as a coercive campaign to keep him close.
Epstein reportedly deployed knowledge of the affairs, combined with what Gates characterized as outright fabrications, in a bid to prevent the break.
“He was unsuccessful in this effort, but it shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda. I should never have met with Epstein in the first place,” Gates said.
Among the most incendiary documents to emerge from the Epstein files was an email in which the financier alleged that Gates had planned to administer an antibiotic to Melinda — without her knowledge — to treat a sexually transmitted infection he had allegedly contracted from Russian women. Gates has flatly denied that account, calling it false.
The Wall Street Journal separately reported that Gates disclosed affairs with two Russian women to staff at his foundation, though he has denied any contact with Epstein’s victims.
Gates’s 27-year marriage to Melinda collapsed in 2021. His association with Epstein was widely reported as a contributing factor.
After the divorce, Melinda offered a blunt assessment of the man her ex-husband had called a business contact: “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”
Reports indicate Melinda flagged her discomfort with Epstein as far back as 2013, yet Gates continued the relationship for at least another year.
Gates flew on Epstein’s private jet and exchanged emails with him, though he has repeatedly denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean or encountering the financier’s victims. “I never went to his island, I never met any women,” he told Australian television in February.
Epstein was indicted by federal prosecutors in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking minors, with the Justice Department alleging he assembled a network of girls as young as 14 for abuse between 2002 and 2005.
He died by suicide in a New York City jail cell later that year while awaiting trial.
The House Oversight Committee called Gates as part of its sweeping investigation into Epstein and convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell, focusing on how federal authorities handled the case and what remains unreleased from government files.
President Donald Trump, himself a figure with a documented prior relationship with Epstein, initially resisted releasing the files — a stance that generated accusations of obstruction during the opening stretch of his return to office.
Democrats on the committee have signaled they plan to pursue what Gates knew about Epstein’s criminal conduct and the true nature of their dealings.
Wednesday’s session was not recorded on video, though a transcript is expected to be made available.
Gates arrived prepared. He retained former Justice Department attorney John Moran and was coached by Jake Greenberg, a former senior investigator for the Oversight Committee itself.
Ethics analysts noted the optics were unusual, though no rules were found to have been broken.
