Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates has said her ex-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, being named in new files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein dredged up “painful times in my marriage”.
She told an NPR podcast she feels “unbelievable sadness” about the Epstein allegations and that the people named in the records, including her former husband, need to answer to it.
“I am so happy to be away from all the muck,” she said. The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
Records released by the US justice department include an allegation by Epstein that Bill Gates caught a sexually transmitted disease. He has called the claim “absolutely absurd”.
I remember several years ago some incredibly cringey puff piece video came out about Gates. He must have financed it, in fact. It was aimed at ‘humanizing’ him, and painting him as a genius polymath philanthropist. My family was mad at me for calling out the blatant bullshit. I’m glad everyone is finally getting to see that there are no good billionaires.
Maybe there are, definitely not those who seek attention (msft tsla amzn etc)
I don’t think it’s possible.
I think it is possible but just not probable.
I’d like to believe that at least.
I don’t think it’s worth the risk.
Deny, deflect, distract, repeat
Holy shit some of these comments are fucking gross and victim-blamey in here. Why the fuck is Melinda the target here any differently than the victims themselves who didn’t speak up until later?
I think we all know why none did, just as none of you would in all reality: fear, and who would actually listen without proof?
See the #MeToo movement, how that backfired for so many women, let alone trying to take down one of the richest people of all time. Also for those who paid attention, Melinda had long heavily hinted at this shit.
I think most people’s issue is that all she’s ever done is hint, and now that there is less reason than ever to hint, that’s all she continues to do.
This case needs someone to step up, corroborate the documents, and speak out so some of these things can be unredacted. She, as a billionaire, is best equipped, but chose to keep hinting on a podcast tour instead, and in the current climate, that makes people suspicious.
I am just speculating here, like everyone else is, but she is probably just hinting because she doesn’t know shit.
“My ex-husband, billionaire tech mogul Bill Gates, used to hang out with Jeff Epstein. Bill would occasionally meet up with him” is the extent should could say and prove. The rest is hearsay.
That’s a bad argument, lots of people end up dead
Why the fuck is Melinda the target here any differently than the victims themselves who didn’t speak up until later?
She’s another billionaire who directly or indirectly benefitted from that circle
How did she benefit, apart from what I thought people around these parts would’ve been gleeful to hear that she “took from the rich,” and gave much of that money away?
It was a failed marriage; the more she learned, the more she was disgusted. She took the money and left. We don’t even fucking know if she isn’t partly a victim herself. Nevertheless she’s speaking up now, which she in no way had to.
Yet some here would paint her as Ghislaine Maxwell herself, what the fuck?
She’s not as bad, but she definitely isn’t a good person worth defend.
It’s why nothing will ever change. People don’t care more than getting some potshots. It’s why the population is so easy to distract.
And yet…she still uses Gates in her name.
Still victim blaming. How do you decide what someone else chooses to be called? 27 years is a long time, and there are a lot of good reasons to hold onto a name even after the person you shared it with turns out to be bad for you. Does everyone who estranges from their father need to change their last name if that’s who they got it from?
I mean, I wouldn’t wanna be called ms pedo
Yes, there are good reasons here, namely political and power influence.
Funny how this is the victim, not the children on the Island .
I never said there was only one victim, friend. Many people may be hurt by a single action, of course to varying degrees.
Didn’t that end up with that movie guy jailed for near life?
So she is very much suggesting here that he did go to pedo island and that he did have sex there…
Not that it surprises me, but… I’ve hated Microsoft since it’s founding, it’s been one evil fucking company, but Bill Gates going down as a pedophile isn’t on my 2026 bingo card.
Edit: Do we have any more sources on this? I somehow find it hard to believe
I don’t think she is suggesting that. The emails don’t say anything about him going to the island. They were emails Epstein sent to himself and one of them which he signed “Boris” says he was asked to do inappropriate things “from helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trusts, with married women”. Bill Gates was alleged to have had an affair with Russian bridge player “Mila Antonova” in 2010 so likely the email is referring to that, and Melinda Gates is referring to the painful time when her husband had an affair.
There is a lot that’s been going on with these files, but the island wasn’t only underage girls right? It was underage and just legal types?
So it’s possible Bill never partook in the underage stuff, still got the STD, but is still a scumbag since just being involved with it all means he knew what was going on even if he didnt put his dick in it.
So he either is a pedo, or knowingly supported a large group of them.
Yes, but he donated a fraction of his fortune to a set of charities chosen to maximize their PR value! That totally absolves him!
Not even purely for PR value. One of his foundation’s causes is providing free medicines to third-world countries – to stave off their saying “fuck patents” and producing the drugs for themselves, thereby helping to erode intellectual property rights.
Fun fact this has always confused me because I would think the best way to maximize PR value would be to just set up a metric fucktonne of charities basically everywhere with a wide breadth of functions. The whole hyper specific charity thing just comes across as weird at best intentionally manipulative at worst, which I guess is the point but it should be harder to tell at first glance y’know?
As I understand Bill Gates is a member of the effective altruism movement, which is a movement that argues that we should support the most effective charities that are actually proven to do good by measurable metrics, not just assumed to do good. The idea is to study different interventions and see how effective and how expensive they are (e.g. let’s say we want to pay for textbooks for kids in Sierra Leone to help them complete school. Sure, seems like a good idea. But does that actually result in a greater percentage of students completing school? or is the reason they don’t finish school mainly because they can’t get enough to eat and they’re suffering from tuberculosis, in which case the money would be better spent on tuberculosis treatment and food or just giving money directly to the families?). As a baseline, it compares how effective it is to just give money directly to the world’s poorest people. And it only supports charities that are more effective than that, per dollar. This ends up supporting a few niche charities because if charity A proves they can save a life for $100 and charity B proves they can save a life for $200, you may as well dump as much money into charity A as they can handle, and only give money to charity B if charity A runs out of capacity/ability to save lives at that price.
Or she was just talking in general terms that he has some … issues.
I would hate to find out that she knew he was a pedo.
Ok but if she knew about it and it’s why the divorce why didn’t she say shit, unless I’m missing something?
Their divorce process started when their youngest daughter turned 18, so it might be the usual “sticking to a toxic wasteland of a marriage for the children” delusion.
She may have had to sign an NDA for the divorce to go through.
Dunno why y’all are blaming her for shit. She wasn’t the one involved with Epstein.
For a lot of (if not most) people, knowing about the heinous shit happening and doing nothing about it (at minimum trying to go public) is an issue nearly as bad as actually participating.
And maybe people have forgotten how to use their critical thinking skills first before jumping on the blame bandwagon.
If you think she was clueless to what’s going on, then say it.
Take a stance.
Not blaming,and an NDA to cover illegal shit is enforceable?
I’m not from USA, I don’t know how NDAs work there?
No an NDA can’t cover withholding information about a crime. Asking someone to not divulge information under an NDA pertaining to a crime, is in itself a crime/an unenforceable nda
The emails don’t seem to allege any crimes by Bill Gates, there’s nothing about the island etc., it just seems to be alluding to an affair with a Russian woman which already came out a couple years ago, that Epstein knew about and was trying to blackmail Gates about. Unethical but not actually criminal activity on Gates’ part. Possible that could be covered by an NDA since it wasn’t publicly known yet when they split.
If the NDA used generic language, ie: spouse is barred from sharing any private conversations or information shared within the marriage, it may be covered … but IANAL so …
How do you see that playing out?
Subject A says, “Ron told me he committed a crime”
Subject B says “I’m suing you for divulging information that should be covered by the NDA”
It would be admitting that the statement occurred. Thus now the entire NDA is void, and those court records can be used as testimony in a criminal investigation.
Do you actually think Billy Boy sat her down and confessed to fucking teenagers???
Jfc buddy. Use your brain. If anything he had to tell her he caught an STD so she would have to go have it taken care of. For most women that would be the last straw … marriage done.
Keep in mind, OP literally pulled the “NDA” thing out of his ass.
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If you don’t specify pronouns there is no way for anyone to know your gender on an Internet forum, so your derogatory animosity comes across as particularly petty.
There are generic terms which can be used, ie: buddy.
No one thinks about that on an Internet forum and policing that seems incredibly petty. Especially when you do it by calling someone a dipshit.
Unless you go out of the way to tell people what pronouns you want, then don’t be upset when people pick one.
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America is covered with them. Iirc California is the only state to have banned them.
An NDA doesn’t prevent you from reporting crimes to the relevant authorities. This woman was very much part of the system. She deserves credit for getting out but she’s by no means an angel.
We don’t know if she had any information about crimes, or whether she went to the authorities ffs
Dunno why y’all are blaming her for shit. She wasn’t the one involved with Epstein.
She knew what was happening and didn’t tell us.
Don’t be a fool.
TIL you can sign NDAs for divorces
I believe that she divorced him after the Epstein thing first blew up and it was because of that.
Well, that and maybe the STD Bill gave her .
Oh look, another rich asshole who knew what was happening but didn’t tell us.
Fuck these people and fuck their families. We should be taking their wealth by force.
Can’t be a philanthropist and a billionaire at the same time, fucking media know this
If there’s one way to do that, it’s by marrying into it and then divorcing…
All I’m hearing is “she fucking knew what was going on and didn’t say shit”. IANAL, but does that equal an accessory or obstruction charge or what?
There are no crimes being alleged here, just an affair with an adult woman, which isn’t illegal, so nothing you could charge Bill with, nevermind Melinda. From Forbes: “No documents allege Gates was involved with wrongdoing in connection with Epstein or had knowledge of the financier’s alleged sex trafficking”.
The only thing it does contain that could be criminal is an allegation that Bill requested antibiotics to give to Melinda to treat an STD without her knowledge. But this is just an allegation in an email that Epstein wrote to himself, for some reason, after Gates had cut contact with him, seemingly from the perspective of “Boris”. Presumably Gates’ advisor Boris Nikolic.
The email is both to and from Epstein, but says in one part that if he and Gates were to trade places he would have said “Boris, this is not your fault” and given him a house and 5 years’ pay. Then it says “…what I did receive however was an unfriendly strongly worded email, telling me how employable I am and that I should not look to you for any significant financial help in the future, TO add insult to the injury you them 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.” (No such emails from Gates are in the Epstein files). Then a third email also to himself saying he was quitting. (Nikolic appears to have continued to work with Gates for years after that.) Honestly it doesn’t seem very credible to me that Nikolic, a Harvard trained science advisor for Gates, would have asked Jeffery Epstein to write such an email to Gates on his behalf. Kinda seems like weird shit Epstein made up because he was angry about being dumped by Gates who he had been angling to get a bunch of money from as part of a philanthropy deal (Epstein promised Gates he could get a bunch of funds donated for his foundation, but said he wanted a kickback out of any funding he secured.)
Dude gave her an std and she still won’t tell the world everything she knows?! The fuck.
