Bill Gates said Monday that he regrets maintaining a relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against the advice of his ex-wife.
“You go back in time,” he told Australia’s ABC 7.30. “I’ll say it for the hundredth time, yes, I shouldn’t have had dinner with him.”
Pressed by ABC’s Sara Ferguson if Melinda French Gates’ distaste for Epstein was related to his ability to sexually compromise people, Gates replied, “No.”
“I just had dinner with him,” Gates said.
Gates began dating Epstein in 2011, when the latter was already convicted of sex crimes and required to register as a sex offender, according to a 2019 report by the New York Times. The two met at least four times, the media reported.
French Gates said in March 2022 that she felt uncomfortable about her ex-husband’s meetings with the disgruntled financier.
“He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards,” French Gates told “CBS This Morning’s” Gayle King about the first time he met Epstein.
The couple announced their divorce in 2021, but continued to work together as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to improve access to healthcare around the world. They have been married for 27 years.
The Microsoft co-founder told ABC there was never a relationship between the foundation and Epstein.
Gates previously said the purpose of the meetings with Epstein was to raise money for global health.
“I didn’t realize that in meeting him, I almost downplayed the incredibly terrible things he did,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show last year.
Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of underage girls. The New York Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that his cause of death was officially determined to be suicide.
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