Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, told a congressional committee on Wednesday that the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein exploited information about his extramarital affairs “to pressure me to re-engage with him” after Mr. Gates had begun to sever ties with him.
Mr. Gates made his comment in an opening statement to the House Oversight Committee, which asked him questions about his dealings with Mr. Epstein at a closed-door hearing. The committee has been investigating the Justice Department’s handling of its investigations into Mr. Epstein and those associated with him.
A representative for Mr. Gates released a copy of his statement on Wednesday ahead of the hearing, which was expected to last for four hours.
In his statement, Mr. Gates repeated his prior comments that he regretted having anything to do with Mr. Epstein but had never seen him engage in any “criminal conduct.” Mr. Gates also said that he had “never victimized anyone.”
Revelations about Mr. Gates’s interactions with Mr. Epstein began to surface not long after Mr. Epstein was arrested by federal authorities in 2019 on sex trafficking charges. The revelations have tarnished Mr. Gates’s reputation, contributed to the erosion of his marriage and prompted his charitable foundation this year to authorize an external review of his ties to Mr. Epstein.
“In the work I do, reputation is the basis for developing partnerships that save lives. Meeting with Epstein was a grave error in judgment and put this work at risk,” Mr. Gates said in his statement. “His behavior was antithetical to all my efforts to contribute to a world where everyone has a chance to live a healthy and productive life.”
Mr. Gates’s dealings with Mr. Epstein began in 2011, about three years after the disgraced financier pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The guilty plea came after a controversial nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, which short-circuited an investigation into allegations that Mr. Epstein had regularly sexually abused dozen of teenage girls — some as young as 14.
When he was introduced to Mr. Epstein in 2011, Mr. Gates said he should have done more homework on the man he was meeting.
“I recall being aware that Epstein had faced prior legal issues, but I did not fully understand the extent of the crimes he committed,” he said. “I accepted the introduction without applying the scrutiny I should have.”
Up until 2014, Mr. Gates had several meetings with Mr. Epstein, mainly to discuss the possibility of setting up a so-called donor-advised fund — a type of tax-advantaged charitable fund. Mr. Epstein also had conversations about the fund with bankers at JPMorgan Chase, and he had hoped to earn a fee in connection with his work. But the fund never came about, and by the end of 2014 Mr. Epstein’s conversations with Mr. Gates over it had largely ended.
Mr. Gates said he learned after he stopped dealing with Mr. Epstein that the disgraced financier had been trying to use his marital problems to gain leverage over him.
The sex offender had a pattern of trying to gather personal information on some of the people he dealt with to put himself in a position of making them aware he knew things about them.
“As the public can now see, based on what has been released in the files, Epstein was working to use information about my infidelities,” Mr. Gates said in his statement.
The House committee has already interviewed a number of people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including former President Bill Clinton and the retail magnate Leslie Wexner. The committee also has scheduled interviews with James Staley, a Wall Street executive who for years was Mr. Epstein’s main advocate at JPMorgan, and Leon Black, the private equity billionaire who paid Mr. Epstein $170 million for tax and estate services.
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