Microsoft founder Bill Gates spent his Tuesday doing something only the richest men in the world get to do: apologizing for behavior that would end anyone else’s career while facing absolutely no consequences whatsoever.
In a town hall with staff of the Gates Foundation, reported the Wall Street Journal, Gates apologized for extensive contact with deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein — years after his crimes were publicly well known — in a relationship which rubbed up against two extramarital affairs.
“I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities,” Gates told employees.
The billionaire insisted that, though the Russian women he slept with went on to meet Epstein at a later date, he had met them first. “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates told staffers, per the WSJ.
Responding to images released in the latest tranche of Epstein files depicting Gates with young women whose faces were blurred, the billionaire insisted they were Epstein’s various assistants. “To be clear I never spent any time with victims, the women around him,” he said.
Going on, Gates admitted that he didn’t do a proper background check before meeting with the infamous pedophile in 2011 — three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
“I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made,” Gates said. “Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior.”
Despite traveling with Epstein across Europe and the US well into 2014, the Microsoft co-founder insisted that he “never stayed overnight.”
The latest tranche of Epstein documents is shedding new light on the relationship between Gates and the infamous financier, as well as the former’s extramarital affairs. For years after Epstein’s death, the narrative that emerged was one of blackmail, particularly over Gates’ affair with Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player.
One of the women referenced in Gates’ apology speech, Antonova first met the tech mogul at a bridge tournament in 2010, per previous reporting by the WSJ. Antonova wouldn’t meet Epstein until November 2013, a relationship which afforded the Russian woman a tidy sum of cash to cover her schooling.
It wasn’t until 2017 that the alleged blackmail episode began, according to the WSJ, when the pedophile financier approached Gates to cover the cost of Antonova’s schooling.
“It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein,” Gates told his staffers.
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