Bill Gates to face House panel in Epstein files probe

Bill Gates will sit for a closed-door House Oversight Committee interview as Congress keeps widening its Jeffrey Epstein files probe beyond the convicted financier’s own conduct. The hearing underscores what lawmakers still think is unresolved: how Epstein maintained contact with powerful men, and what those ties reveal about access, influence and institutional judgment.

Republican Rep. James Comer, who chairs the committee, formally asked Gates to testify after his name appeared multiple times in a trove of Justice Department documents. Those materials include calendar entries showing meetings between Gates and Epstein, email exchanges about philanthropic projects and photographs of Gates at events that Epstein also attended. The committee has been questioning witnesses privately before later releasing transcripts, a method that signals it wants to build the record before making the politics public.

Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. He has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s abuse of girls, while also acknowledging that the association strained his marriage to Melinda French Gates. He has also said that meeting Epstein was a huge mistake, a blunt attempt to distance his philanthropy from a criminal case that continues to reverberate through tech, finance and elite giving.

The committee’s interest in Gates goes beyond one billionaire’s reputation. Epstein’s name still carries political weight because the records around him point to a broader web of prominent figures who remained in contact with him even after his history of sexual abuse became public. For Comer and his committee, Gates represents both a witness and a signal that the panel intends to keep pulling at the threads connecting money, status and silence.

That larger backdrop also reaches into Gates’s own philanthropic world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation later acknowledged that some staff members met with Epstein, saying he claimed he could mobilize major philanthropic resources for global health. That detail sharpens the central question for lawmakers: not whether Epstein was notorious, but how institutions and influential people still decided to engage with him anyway.