Bill Gates appears before House Committee in Epstein probe

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is testifying before the U.S. House oversight committee Wednesday, as part of a broader investigation into the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The committee requested a closed-door interview with Gates in March, months after millions of documents retrieved from Epstein's estate revealed correspondence between the late New York financier and business titans and politicians.

The oversight committee said in its March letter to Gates that it believes he has information that will assist with the review into how the federal government handled the investigation into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime Epstein confidant convicted of child sex trafficking in 2022. Gates wasn't accused of any wrongdoing regarding his relationship with Epstein.

The committee also requested interviews with former Bill Clinton aide Doug Band, former Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black, former personal assistants for Epstein Lesley Groff and Sarah Kellen, Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler and Gateway co-founder Ted Waitt.

Gates first met Epstein in 2011. It was three years after Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution.

The two met three times in 2011 to discuss global health and the desire to raise more money," Gates told Gates Foundation employees during a Q&A style town hall in February. Gates and Epstein had formed the basis of a plan to raise $100 billion for a potential fund dedicated to global health.

Gates, through the foundation he formed with his then-wife Melinda French Gates, would bring years of experience funding global health initiatives to the table. Epstein would bring his connections to Wall Street billionaires.

The two had "monstrous fun" together during one of the meetings in 2011, Epstein said in an email to disgraced British politician Peter Mandelson. Epstein had flown into Seattle, staying at the downtown luxury Hotel 1000 before meeting with the Microsoft co-founder.

Gates continued to spend time with Epstein through 2014. By then, Gates said it was clear Epstein's promise of billions was never going to materialize and he cut off contact.

"I made a huge mistake. ... Our reputation is on the line and what was the upside? In retrospect, nothing," Gates told employees.

The Gates Foundation has since launched an external review into the ties between the foundation and Epstein.

Records from the Epstein estate released by the U.S. Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee show Epstein kept tabs on Gates through one of Gates' advisers, Boris Nikolic.

Epstein’s emails with Nikolic date back to at least February 2008, one of which asks him to “Wish bill a happy birthday.” And in late 2010, emails from Esptein’s assistant show Nikolic and Epstein setting up a meeting with Gates. Epstein also tried to get Gates to visit Epstein's island, by way of Nikolic, but Gates said he never visited.

The relationship between Gates and Nikolic frayed in 2013, leaving Epstein and Nikolic to plot a way to keep the latter in Gates’ network. Not long after Epstein, Nikolic and Gates met in Paris in July 2013, Nikolic said Gates and he were not allowed to work together anymore.

During that trip, Nikolic invited Gates to the Parisian cabaret Crazy Horse, saying they could meet a few of the artists since Epstein had dated several.

“I would have done it when I was younger but will have to skip this time!" Gates wrote in an email back to Nikolic.

Nikolic, in a November 2013 email to Epstein, blamed Melinda French Gates for the end of his relationship with Gates. The two divorced in 2021.

"A month after NO email, he sent me an email re Melinda finding out and s not being able to work together," Nikolic’s email to Epstein said. He was referring to an affair Gates had with a Russian bridge player, knowledge that Epstein would later try to use as leverage over Gates along with the knowledge of another affair Gates had with a Russian nuclear physicist.

In an email Epstein seemingly wrote to himself, he said he was caught up in marital dispute between Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and was “helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trysts, with married women.”

Gates called the email "horrific" and told Gates Foundation employees that most of it was not true, aside from his affairs.

When the email first surfaced in January, a Gates spokesperson called the claims "completely absurd."

Gates' relationship with Epstein has caused consternation outside of the Gates Foundation.

TerraPower, the Bellevue, Washington-based nuclear power company he founded, held an all-staff meeting in March. The company's CEO Chris Levesque addressed the emails between Epstein and Gates, as well as Gates' apology to Gates Foundation employees. Levesque also emphasized that TerraPower had no engagement with Epstein.

But the company's board chair, Gates, and its vice chair, Nathan Myhrvold, held continued correspondence with Epstein.

Myhrvold is a former chief technology officer for Microsoft and worked closely with Gates in the C-suite during the 1990s.

Documents show that Epstein and Myhrvold maintained years of email exchanges, with the latter listed as a passenger on Epstein’s private plane at least twice in the 1990s. The two also exchanged emails after Epstein's 2008 conviction, making vulgar innuendos in several threads. In another thread the two set up a happenstance meeting on Epstein’s island.

Levesque told TerraPower employees in March that the company’s board was monitoring the news surrounding its board members and Epstein but that, as he sees it, there’s been no evidence of wrongdoing disclosed.

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