By Euronews
Published on
Bill Gates said he regrets “every minute” he spent with late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, denying allegations contained in draft emails released by US authorities last week.
“Every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologise,” Gates told 9News Australia in an interview broadcast Wednesday.
After the US Justice Department released nearly 3 million new pages of Epstein-related documents last week, unsent draft emails surfaced making claims about Gates.
“Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false,” Gates said. “I don’t know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way?”
In one of the drafts which he wrote in 2013, Epstein alleged Gates engaged in extramarital affairs, writing that his relationship with Gates ranged from “helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trysts, with married women.”
“To add insult to the injury you then subsequently with tears in your eyes, implore me to please delete the emails regarding your STD, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda, and the description of your penis,” the email says.
A spokesperson for Gates said the documents show only “Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”
Melinda French Gates told NPR in an interview scheduled to air Thursday that seeing the documents brought back “memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage.” The couple divorced in 2021.
“Whatever questions remain there of what — I can’t even begin to know all of it — those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me,” she said.
French Gates has said previously that her former husband’s connection to Epstein contributed to her decision to end the marriage.
Gates said he first met Epstein in 2011 — three years after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor — and attended dinners with him over a three-year period. He said he never travelled to Epstein’s private island and denied having sexual encounters.
“The focus was always, he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. In retrospect, that was a dead end,” Gates said. “I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.”
Epstein died of apparent suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while facing federal sex trafficking charges.
Appearing in the Epstein documents does not indicate wrongdoing, and no charges have been brought against any of the prominent people who are mentioned in the files.
All have denied having anything to do with Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls and young women.
Additional sources • AFP