Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has pulled out of a major tech summit just hours before he was due to deliver a flagship speech amid fresh scrutiny of his ties to pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities, Mr. Gates will not be delivering his keynote address,” the Gates Foundation said in a statement issued shortly before its chair was due to speak at Thursday’s event in India.
The tech tycoon has consistently denied as “false” new allegations contained in the Justice Department’s latest release of case files on Epstein’s crimes.
Draft emails from that cache, seemingly addressed from the disgraced financier to himself and dated well after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, show Epstein writing about facilitating “sex with Russian girls” on Gates’ behalf.
Epstein also appears to have written about a sexually transmitted disease allegedly contracted through one of those encounters, along with how to secretly administer a course of antibiotics to Gates’ former spouse, Melinda French Gates.
Gates has recently spoken of how he met Epstein in 2011, and shared “a number of dinners” with the convicted sex trafficker over the following three years.
The email exchange about the STD, however, the philanthropist insists is untrue. “Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself,” told Australian outlet 9 News earlier this month.
“Ah, that email was never sent. The email is, you know, false,” he went on. “So I don’t know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way? It just reminds me, every minute I spent with him I regret and I, you know, apologize that I did that.”
Gates further added that he only spent time with Epstein in pursuit of donations to philanthropic causes.
“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,” he said.
“You know, in retrospect, that was a dead end, and I’ve said many times, but I’ll say it again: I was foolish to spend time with him,” he added. “I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Gates Foundation for further comment on this story.
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