{"id":64115,"date":"2021-05-07T18:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T22:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=64115"},"modified":"2021-05-07T18:05:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T22:05:53","slug":"64000-question-really-why-did-bill-gates-visit-with-convicted-serial-sex-offender-jeffrey-epstein-so-many-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=64115","title":{"rendered":"$64,000 Question: Really, why did Bill Gates visit with convicted serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein so many times?!?!?!<\/i><\/b>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melinda Gates Warned Bill About Jeffrey Epstein<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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After a secret meeting between the couple and the wealthy sex offender, Melinda was furious and told friends she wanted nothing to do with Epstein, The Daily Beast has learned.<\/h3>\n

Lachlan Cartwright, Senior Reporter & Kate Briquelet, Senior Reporter<\/p>\n

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast \/ Photos via Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

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Melinda Gates met with\u00a0convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>\u00a0alongside her husband, Bill, in New York City and soon after said she was furious at the relationship between the two men, according to people familiar with the situation.<\/p>\n

The previously unreported meeting occurred at Epstein\u2019s Upper East Side mansion in September 2013, on the same day the couple accepted the\u00a0Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award<\/a>\u00a0at The Pierre hotel and were\u00a0photographed<\/a>\u00a0alongside then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

The meeting would prove a turning point for Gates\u2019 relationship with Epstein, the people familiar with the matter say, as Melinda told friends after the encounter how uncomfortable she was in the company of the wealthy sex offender and how she wanted nothing to do with him.<\/p>\n

Gates\u2019 friendship with Epstein\u2014who for years was accused of molesting scores of underage girls\u2014still haunts Melinda, according to friends of the couple who spoke to The Daily Beast this week in light of the pair\u2019s divorce announcement, which had been weeks in the making.<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast has learned that financial and public-relations specialists had been feverishly working on details of the pair\u2019s split for weeks before the couple announced their divorce on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,\u201d the two said in a brief statement posted on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. \u201cWe have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative for Bill and Melinda Gates did not respond to requests for comment for this report.<\/p>\n

The ties between Gates and Epstein ran much deeper than the tech mogul first admitted. As\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>, starting in 2011, Gates met with Epstein on numerous occasions. This was three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl in Florida; by then, accusations that Epstein exploited girls and young women\u00a0were widely reported<\/a> in the press.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you ask Bill Gates, he\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh I had absolutely no idea he wasn\u2019t up to anything of the highest moral character.\u2019 But I seriously doubted Epstein\u2019s moral character.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
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As the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>reported, two people close to Gates acted as intermediaries between the two:\u00a0Boris Nikolic<\/a>, a biotech investor and former adviser to Gates who was mysteriously named a backup executor in Epstein\u2019s last will and testament; and Melanie Walker, who worked at the Gates Foundation and served as a science adviser to Epstein. A person close to Walker told The Daily Beast she did not attend nor help set up any meetings between Gates and Epstein. Nikolic did not return multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Soon after Epstein\u2019s arrest in July 2019, Gates became one of many prominent people to face scrutiny over ties to the sex trafficker.<\/p>\n

The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>revealed<\/a>\u00a0Gates had met with Epstein at a 2011 get-together at Epstein\u2019s Manhattan townhouse that included the financier\u2019s ex-girlfriend\u00a0Eva Andersson-Dubin<\/a>\u00a0and her daughter. (Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein\u2019s sex ring, has accused Dubin\u2019s hedge-funder husband, Glenn, of abuse\u2014a charge he has strenuously denied.)<\/p>\n

Indeed, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0reported Gates visited Epstein\u00a0multiple times from 2011 to 2013<\/a>, and that Epstein had tried pitching a new charitable fund to JPMorgan honchos and to the Gates Foundation. In 2013, Gates also took a ride on Epstein\u2019s private jet (christened by tabloids as the Lolita Express), from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, according to flight records reviewed by the\u00a0Times<\/em>.\u00a0CNBC also reported<\/a>\u00a0that Gates rendezvoused with Epstein in New York in 2013.<\/p>\n

When Gates first met Epstein, he was still Microsoft\u2019s chairman and the second richest person in the world, with a\u00a0net worth of $56 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met him. I didn\u2019t have any business relationship or friendship with him,\u201d Gates said in September 2019, as media coverage into his connections with Epstein were heating up. \u201cI didn\u2019t go to New Mexico or Florida or Palm Beach or any of that. There were people around him who were saying, \u2018Hey, if you want to raise money for global health and get more philanthropy, he knows a lot of rich people.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery meeting where I was with him were meetings with men. I was never at any parties or anything like that. He never donated any money to anything that I know about.\u201d<\/p>\n

One associate in the technology world who\u2019s attended the same events as Epstein, including a TED conference in Monterey, California, was surprised Gates had considered\u00a0cultivating philanthropic ties<\/a>\u00a0with the late pedophile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t make the claim that so many are claiming,\u201d the person told The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, referring to people in Epstein\u2019s orbit who\u2019ve said they had no suspicions of Epstein\u2019s abuse. \u201cIf you ask Bill Gates, he\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh I had absolutely no idea he wasn\u2019t up to anything of the highest moral character.\u2019 But I seriously doubted Epstein\u2019s moral character.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people around him,\u201d the person added, referring to Epstein, \u201chad a varying spectrum of what they knew and what they didn\u2019t know and how they rationalized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This person wasn\u2019t surprised that Melinda Gates was put off by Epstein, saying \u201ca lot of people were uncomfortable with Epstein, completely independent of his\u201d sexual misconduct. \u201cHe just was an obnoxious guy. He almost made a point of having bad manners, not paying attention at dinner\u2026 I could see how anybody, even without suspicions, would not want to be around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Epstein had a \u201csuperhuman\u201d ability as a social climber, the one-time colleague of the financier\u00a0<\/strong>said, adding that the photos displayed in Epstein\u2019s mansion of former President Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II were \u201creally obnoxious, especially if you\u2019re somebody like Melinda and hanging around with heads of state anyway. Then to have someone do this endless name-dropping\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he got up from the table at dinner, he wouldn\u2019t just get up. He\u2019d tell you he had a call with a president of some country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein also reportedly had a habit of bragging that he was an unofficial adviser to Bill Gates\u2014a claim the Microsoft founder\u2019s representatives denied. One\u00a0Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0report indicates Epstein claimed to be a tax consultant for the tech magnate.<\/p>\n

After his initial meeting with the financier, the billionaire philanthropist told Gates Foundation staff in an email: \u201cHis lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me.\u201d Asked about this message, Gates\u2019 spokeswoman said he \u201cwas referring only to the unique decor\u201d at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and \u201cEpstein\u2019s habit of spontaneously bringing acquaintances in to meet Mr. Gates.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapport between Gates and Epstein seems to have fizzled in the fall of 2014, sometime after Gates donated $2 million to MIT\u2019s Media Lab. The lab\u2019s former director Joi Ito, in an internal email unearthed by\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>, claimed Epstein facilitated that donation. As the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0investigation noted: \u201cMr. Epstein complained to an acquaintance at the end of 2014 that Mr. Gates had stopped talking to him, according to a person familiar with the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n

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