The philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates canceled a high-profile speech at an artificial intelligence summit in India amid fresh scrutiny of public figures who maintained relationships with Jeffrey Epstein.
Shortly before Mr. Gates was scheduled to deliver the speech on Thursday, the Gates Foundation issued a brief statement. “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 announced via X.
The statement did not specifically mention Mr. Epstein, but the Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of emails, text messages and photographs has brought renewed attention to Mr. Gates. In two newly released documents, Mr. Epstein wrote notes to himself suggesting that Mr. Gates had engaged in extramarital sex and had to acquire drugs “in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls.”
“These claims — from a proven, disgruntled liar — are absolutely absurd and completely false,” a representative for Mr. Gates has said of those missives.
The fact that Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, met on numerous occasions and worked together on a potential charitable fund has been public knowledge since shortly after Mr. Epstein died by suicide while in custody in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The volume of messages between Mr. Gates and his representatives and Mr. Epstein, as well as photographs of Mr. Gates released by the Justice Department with women’s faces blacked out to protect their identities, raised new questions about the depth of their ties.
The Epstein files’ release has brought consequences for powerful figures enmeshed in the disgraced financier’s affairs. On Thursday, the British police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, over accusations that he shared confidential information with Mr. Epstein while serving as a British trade envoy. The former prime minister of Norway, Thorbjorn Jagland, was charged with “gross corruption” in connection with gifts, travel and loans he might have received from Mr. Epstein.
The files show that Mr. Gates met Mr. Jagland, then the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, through Mr. Epstein. To Mr. Epstein’s dismay, Mr. Gates cut off contact with him, a decision that Mr. Epstein attributed to the influence of Mr. Gates’s then-wife, Melinda French Gates. Mr. Epstein discussed having Kathryn Ruemmler, the former Obama White House counsel, plead his case to Ms. French Gates. “She would love to sit with Melinda and give her the other side of jeffrey,” Mr. Epstein wrote in a 2017 text message included in the release.
Ms. Ruemmler recently resigned from Goldman Sachs, where she was the top legal officer, after messages emerged in which she advised Mr. Epstein on how to respond to questions about his sex crimes and addressed him as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey.”
Ms. French Gates recently gave an emotional interview to NPR in which she said that the latest release of files “brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” and that questions about what happened “are for those people, and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me.”
In an interview two weeks ago with an Australian television station, Mr. Gates said, as he has in the past, that he met with Mr. Epstein in order to try to raise more money for philanthropy.
“It’s factually true that I was only at dinners, you know I never went to the island, I never met any women,” Mr. Gates said, “and so the more that comes out the more clear it’ll be that although the time was a mistake it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.”
Mr. Gates has long been a popular figure in India, where his foundation has a significant presence. The India AI Impact Summit brought together important figures in the field as well as dignitaries like Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.
As recently as Tuesday, the foundation had confirmed Mr. Gates’s participation, saying on X that he was attending and delivering his address as scheduled.
Nicholas Kulish is an enterprise correspondent for The Times writing about philanthropy, wealth and nonprofits. Before that, he served as the Berlin bureau chief and an East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya. He joined The Times as a member of the editorial board in 2005.
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