Businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates appeared this Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee in Washington to testify about his relationship with the millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, of whose crimes, he told congressmen, he had no knowledge. In a closed-door meeting, he also asserted that Epstein attempted to use information about the Microsoft founder’s “marital infidelities” to pressure him, according to his opening statement prior to the question-and-answer session, which was distributed to the media.
“I never witnessed or had any indication that Epstein was involved in criminal conduct,” said Gates, who added that he “never” visited Epstein’s private islands in the Virgin Islands, where dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the crimes of his child sex trafficking network were committed. Nor did he travel, he clarified, to his ranch in Arizona or his residence in Florida, in the town of Palm Beach, where for 15 years the financier forged a friendship with the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
“I have never victimized anyone. Although he may have tried to foster a personal relationship, I never had any interest in it nor did I reciprocate his attempts,” Gates stated, according to the text he read at the beginning of his questioning. “I knew that Epstein had obtained confidential information about my personal life, including the fact that I had been unfaithful to my wife [philanthropist Melinda French Gates]. Those extramarital affairs had no relation to my interactions with Epstein, but they proved painful for my family.”
According to the account of the Microsoft founder, who is not accused of any crime, his relationship with Epstein, which he defined as “a grave error in judgment,” took place between 2011 and 2014; that is, after he had already been convicted in Florida in the first of the two sex trafficking trials he faced; while awaiting the second, the financier died in August 2019 in what the coroner ruled a suicide in a New York cell.
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“I remember knowing that Epstein had had legal problems before, but I didn’t fully understand the scope of the crimes he had committed,” Gates told congressmen about his first contact, which came when Epstein offered to raise money for a “global health project.”
Gates regretted this Wednesday not having subjected that new acquaintance to greater “scrutiny,” defined his interactions as “limited,” and testified that they ended “for good” in December 2014.
It was then, always according to the Microsoft founder’s account, that Epstein used the compromising information about Gates to pressure him, so that the contacts between them would not cease. “He was unsuccessful,” the businessman clarified.
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“Happy” to testify
Upon his arrival this Wednesday at the Capitol, Gates stopped to tell reporters that he was “happy to come voluntarily to testify and contribute to the committee’s work.” “I hope my testimony will be useful to the work —an important work— of the committee in order to achieve justice for the victims,” he stated.
The House Oversight Committee is the Capitol body bearing the brunt of the investigation into the Epstein papers, after Congress almost unanimously (only one Republican voted against it) passed a law last fall to force the Department of Justice to release the case files in its possession, which the Trump Administration, and the president himself, promised they would release only to break that promise time and time again.
The release of papers began shortly before Christmas, and it did not comply with what the law required, given that it was incomplete. There have been two more disclosures, which have infuriated the more than 1,000 victims of a sinister decades-long abuse network, due to the handling of the information and the carelessness in preserving the privacy of those who did not want to come forward.
Millions of documents have yet to see the light of day. Gates is the 15th witness summoned by the House Oversight Committee, as well as one of the most famous on a list that has included the Clintons or former Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom Trump fired for her handling of this case. Among the next potential witnesses to pass through the Capitol during the summer are lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a personal friend and attorney for Epstein, and Todd Blanche, who replaced Bondi at the head of the Department of Justice.
The rules established for Gates’ deposition did not include any restrictions on the questions that could be asked or the topics that could be covered. CNN reported, however, that at one point during the hearing, one of the Microsoft founder’s lawyers informed the congressmen that his client would not accept questions about other infidelities unrelated to the Epstein case.
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A recent The Wall Street Journal article raised the number of suspected extramarital affairs by Gates to 20. The report also detailed a careful machinery, including an army of publicists, advisors, makeup artists, and stylists, aimed at preserving the good image of the Microsoft founder. He has spent years dedicated to damage control, especially regarding what has emerged in the Epstein papers about his relationship with the pedophile millionaire.
The Gates Foundation acknowledged in February that a small number of its employees met with Epstein when he led them to believe he was in a position to secure “significant philanthropic resources for global health.” The matter, according to the foundation, never went beyond an unrealized project.
