Bill Gates calls Epstein meeting a grave error in judgment

Bill Gates told House Oversight investigators that meeting Jeffrey Epstein was a “grave error in judgment,” a stark line from one of the world’s richest men about how Epstein tried to use proximity to power. Gates’s nearly six-hour closed-door interview on June 10 was made public June 23, adding fresh detail to a congressional probe already focused on Epstein’s ties to wealthy and influential figures.

The transcript shows Gates saying he should never have met Epstein and never saw him engaged in criminal conduct. Gates also said he never went to Epstein’s island, ranch or Florida home. His contacts with Epstein, Gates said, began through trusted intermediaries while Epstein was trying to build a charitable fund, and the discussions were tied to philanthropy and the Gates Foundation. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had formally sought Gates’s testimony on March 3, when Chairman James Comer asked seven people for transcribed interviews: Doug Band, Bill Gates, Leon Black, Lesley Groff, Sarah Kellen, Kathryn Ruemmler and Ted Waitt.

What Gates adds to the record is not evidence of criminal conduct by Epstein, but a clearer account of how Epstein allegedly operated around private vulnerability. Gates said Epstein may have tried to pressure or blackmail him by exploiting Gates’s extramarital affairs, and that he had at least three such affairs. He said Epstein learned about them only after the two had cut ties. Gates also said Epstein used an adviser to send veiled threats, appeared to coach someone on how to blackmail him and mixed fact and fiction to leverage compromising information. Gates said he was not actually blackmailed and that Epstein never explicitly threatened him.

That testimony helps sharpen the picture of Epstein as a man who traded on access, secrets and intimidation rather than only money. It also shows how congressional scrutiny is stretching beyond the criminal cases against Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to examine the network around them and the federal government’s handling of the case. Lawmakers have said the investigation remains centered on possible mismanagement by federal authorities and on what the government knew about Epstein’s abuse and associations.

The panel released Gates’s transcript alongside Lesley Groff’s. Groff said she never saw illegal conduct by Epstein and described him as a manipulator who separated his public life from his abuse. The broader record already includes Epstein’s 2008 Florida state felony prostitution plea, his 2019 federal sex-trafficking arrest and his death in jail later that year. Gates’s testimony does not rewrite that history, but it does put a first-person account on the way Epstein allegedly sought leverage over a billionaire whose private life could be turned into pressure.