Bill Gates admitted that meeting with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who he had “several dinners” with, was a “huge mistake.”
“It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there,” Gates said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Gates said he met with Epstein hoping the financier could help raise money for global health issues.
“I had several dinners with him, you know, hoping that what he said about getting billions of philanthropy for global health through contacts that he had might emerge,” Gates said. “When it looked like that wasn’t a real thing, that relationship ended.”
Gates has been reported to have visited Epstein’s home numerous times and even talked with him about his ‘toxic’ marriage while the pedophile allegedly gave him advice on ending his marriage, according to the Daily Beast.
Bill Gates told Cooper that he also ‘certainly’ had concerns about Epstein, who had pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute – years before the tech mogul met the financier.
On July 8, 2019, federal prosecutors charged financier Jeffrey Epstein with one count of sex trafficking of a minor and one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
He was arrested two days earlier in New York on after flying back from Paris on his private jet. The search of his townhouse turned up evidence of sex trafficking and also found “hundreds – and perhaps thousands – of sexually suggestive photographs of fully – or partially – nude females”. Some of the photos were confirmed as those of underage females.
The well-connected hedge fund manager previously evaded similar charges when he secured a non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors in Miami in 2008.
Instead of facing federal charges, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges and served just 13 months in prison. He also registered as a sex offender and paid restitution to the victims identified by the FBI.
In August of 2019, Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell. The New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said his cause of death was suicide by hanging.
