The bill gates problem, p.8
The Bill Gates Problem, page 8
Yet Gates’s responses evolved significantly over time, as a number of journalists, in one of the most spirited looks ever at the world’s most powerful philanthropist, turned up contradiction after contradiction. Most obviously: Why would one of the richest men in the world need help from Jeffrey Epstein to raise money? And how could Gates possibly have been duped into believing that Epstein was a good philanthropic partner?
Bill Gates has an army of people working to keep his reputation sterling and his person free from harm. By the time he met Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2010s, Epstein was a known felon and a registered sex offender—and someone whose misdeeds had also been widely profiled in the news media. It is not only unthinkable that Bill Gates did not know exactly what he was doing or who Epstein was, but it is also unreasonable. Melinda French Gates herself publicly stated that she immediately saw Epstein for who he was and made her feelings known to Bill. “I also met Jeffrey Epstein—exactly one time,” she said in a 2022 interview. “Because I wanted to see who this man was. And I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. So my heart breaks for these young women because that’s how I felt, and here I’m an older woman. My god, I feel terrible for those young women. It was awful.” Like Melinda French Gates, foundation staff also saw Epstein as a major threat to the foundation’s reputation. It is also important to note that Bill and Melinda French Gates have three children, including two daughters—one of whom, at the time Gates was meeting with Epstein, was the same age as some of Epstein’s victims.
After the news media extensively profiled his connection with Epstein, showing that the two had a much more significant relationship than Bill Gates had acknowledged, Gates went from a position of denying and downplaying allegations to issuing an apology—one rooted in a claim of ignorance: “I certainly made a huge mistake, not only meeting him in the first place, but I met with him a number of times. I had a goal of raising money for global health. I didn’t realize that meeting with him almost downplayed the incredibly awful things he did. You know, I learned more about that over time.”
Gates has never been forced to really respond to the many contradictions that continue to surround his relationship with Epstein, however. This means that the full story remains something of a mystery, one that may continue to unravel in the years or decades ahead as more sources come forward.
While it’s easy to discount the Gates-Epstein relationship as gossip or as an unfair distraction from the important substance of Gates’s philanthropy, it deserves close scrutiny for the simple reason that Gates invited Epstein to be a part of his philanthropic empire, an empire that has carefully cultivated an image as a champion of women. Gates recklessly chose to involve foundation staff, and the foundation’s reputation, with Epstein—and did so for many years; Gates Foundation staff remained in contact with Epstein as late as 2017. His relationship with Epstein was also cited as having contributed to his divorce from Melinda French Gates, a split that may permanently change the direction of the Gates Foundation. The Gateses will continue to co-lead the foundation through mid-2023, at which point, Melinda French Gates may step down (or be asked to leave).
The Epstein story is also important because it shows how incapable Bill Gates is of taking responsibility for his actions—and how he’s organized his life so that there is no mechanism to make him take responsibility. As a punishing news cycle reported his extensive relationship with the convicted sex offender, his foundation, incredibly, went silent. Virtually all Bill Gates’s responses to allegations came from his personal spokesperson, not the foundation.
Even if we accept Gates’s hard-to-believe explanation of his relationship with Epstein—that it was organized entirely around charity—this still leaves us to contend with a deeply troubling question: If Gates was willing to partner with a monster like Epstein to raise money for global health, what else is he willing to do to advance his agenda?
This troubling ends-justifies-the-means pathology appears throughout the work of the Gates Foundation, an institution that appears exceedingly comfortable, if not entitled, to use its power and influence to remake the world in ways that, at times, disempower others. This speaks to the idea of moral hazards—what people are capable of doing when they think no one is looking or when they imagine the rules don’t apply to them—which could be seen as the ties that bind men like Epstein and Gates.
Jeffrey Epstein, like Bill Gates, was superrich. When he died, the financier’s estate was valued at $577 million. He also left a legacy of philanthropic giving, directing money to scientific research and universities and participating with Bill Clinton on charitable activities in the early 2000s (before Epstein’s first arrest). Also like Gates, Epstein was something of a power broker, building a rich Rolodex of contacts from the top echelons of science, finance, and politics. A now-famous picture of Gates and Epstein also includes Larry Summers, former U.S. treasury secretary, and James Staley, at the time a top executive at JPMorgan. Many believe that Epstein’s expansive connections to high-powered men helped him secure his plea deal in 2008, when he faced charges that could have locked him away for the rest of his life. He always behaved as if he were above the law—and, in certain practical respects, he was.
For decades, Epstein preyed on the weak and the vulnerable—young girls, many of whom had come from poverty or backgrounds involving abuse. And in his predation, a common accomplice was his wealth: he paid off his victims, offered to fund their schooling, or tried to buy their silence. Epstein also used his personal fortune to build goodwill, open doors, befriend other global elites, and, in the process, secure substantial immunity. And Bill Gates, for a time, would have been one of Epstein’s most powerful allies in this regard; their association sent a signal to polite society that Epstein should be embraced as a potential philanthropic partner, not interrogated as a violent predator.
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NEWS OF GATES and Epstein’s relationship first broke in the summer of 2019, with reports that Epstein had “directed” a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates (not the Gates Foundation) to MIT’s Media Lab in 2014. “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift,” an internal Media Lab email noted.
Gates denied that Epstein had been involved in the gift, but the allegation nevertheless became a major story—because Epstein himself was a major story. He’d been arrested in July on sex trafficking charges, and journalists were busily excavating his network of VIPs. Of all the names that surfaced, the world’s most visible humanitarian drew special scrutiny. After the first spate of stories broke, Gates began to publicly address his ties to Epstein. “I met him. I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him. I didn’t go to New Mexico or Florida or Palm Beach or any of that. There were people around him who were saying, hey, if you want to raise money for global health and get more philanthropy, he knows a lot of rich people. Every 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,” Gates said.
His denials, however, were contradicted by the findings of journalists. While Gates said he hadn’t gone to “Palm Beach or any of that,” flight records—which had already been reported in the news media—showed that Gates had, in fact, flown on Epstein’s plane to Palm Beach. The news media went on to report that Gates had met with the convicted sex offender multiple times at Epstein’s home in Manhattan, including at least one social event where women were present: Miss Sweden and her fifteen-year-old daughter. “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late,” Gates wrote in an email to colleagues the next day. So, why did Gates first tell the media, “Every meeting where I was with him were meetings with men. I was never at any parties or anything like that”?
New York Times writer James B. Stewart noted that Gates refused to specify the exact number of meetings he had with Epstein—yet another red flag. Based on his reporting, Stewart catalogued several: “This included visits to the [Epstein] mansion, seeing each other in Seattle, flying on Epstein’s plane when we all know Bill Gates has his own forty-million-dollar plane. And then … why would Gates say, ‘Oh, I had no relationship with him’ when of course he knows what the facts are.” Stewart’s circumspection was informed by his own previous reporting on Epstein, which included a visit to Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan a year earlier. “He’s a registered sex offender, and after I rang the doorbell, it opens, and there is a beautiful young woman standing there who I didn’t think was sixteen, but she could have been nineteen or something—and I thought, whoa, a sex offender has a beautiful young woman opening the door? So, I didn’t have to go through the door before I realized there’s something really weird going on here.” Like Melinda French Gates, Stewart knew immediately who and what Epstein was.
Gates’s less-than-forthcoming account sent a clear signal that there was more to the story, and journalists kept digging, reporting that Gates and Epstein had actually met dozens of times, that their relationship was personal in nature, and that the two men had even discussed Gates’s failing marriage. Gates disputed all of these findings. News outlets also reported that Gates had been using Epstein as a conduit to get close to the Nobel Peace Prize.
There is some compelling evidence to support this allegation. Epstein had relationships with former Nobel winners like Frank Wilczek, Gerald Edelman, and Murray Gell-Mann. He also had a relationship with a think tank called the International Peace Institute (IPI), which had received donations from charitable foundations linked to Epstein.
In 2013, Epstein, Gates, and representatives of IPI met with Thorbjørn Jagland, the former prime minister of Norway and, at the time, the chair of the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize. Jagland later told journalists that the meeting, held in France, was related to his role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe, a human rights organization. The meeting, Jagland said, focused on a discussion of counterfeit medicines. He downplayed Epstein’s involvement in the meeting, saying, “Bill Gates asked for it and explained why. He brought other people, including from IPI. I didn’t have a routine of assessing the companions of the people I had meetings with.”
This meeting raises a welter of questions. Gates had claimed that his relationship with Epstein was limited to brainstorming a fund-raising effort, so why were the two men taking a meeting together at a human rights group in Europe? Likewise, why would Bill Gates have sought out a meeting with someone on the Nobel Committee?
“While a Nobel Prize would certainly be a great honor, it is false to state that Bill Gates was ‘obsessed’ with the honor, set it as a goal, or campaigned for it in any way,” Gates’s spokesperson told one news outlet. “If Epstein had a plan or motivation to insert himself into any processes related to any awards or honors on behalf of Gates, neither Gates nor anyone he works with was aware of his intentions and they would have rejected any offers for assistance.”
After Bill Gates met with Jagland and the International Peace Institute, the Gates Foundation began donating millions of dollars to the IPI. This raises obvious questions about a possible quid pro quo: that Gates was rewarding the IPI with charitable dollars for having facilitated an introduction to a Nobel jurist.
More notable, Epstein apparently was involved in coordinating the foundation’s donation. Emails surfaced showing him, IPI, and one of Bill Gates’s top deputies, Boris Nikolic, trading messages about the donation. The finding presents Epstein as a direct intermediary in the Gates Foundation’s charitable grant making, something the foundation denies: “The foundation has never had any financial dealings with Epstein. We work with the International Peace Institute, a grantee that supports our efforts to improve health in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
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IN 1992, WHILE visiting New York City shortly after finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, Melanie Walker was having tea at the Plaza Hotel. Jeffrey Epstein also happened to be at the hotel, with Donald Trump, and the two men made a point of introducing themselves to Walker, half their age. Epstein discussed with her the idea of modeling—one news account said he dissuaded her, while another said he suggested an audition with Victoria’s Secret. It was an offer Epstein might have felt comfortable suggesting because he was a financial adviser to the owner of the company, Leslie Wexner.
Thus began a relationship that appears to have lasted decades. Rolling Stone describes Epstein as having been a “mentor” to Walker, noting that as she went on to medical school in the 1990s, she maintained an address in a New York City apartment building owned by Epstein. The New York Times noted that when Walker graduated from medical school, Epstein hired her as his science adviser. It was a role she would also later play for Bill Gates.
According to her website, Walker made her way to Seattle in 2000 for clinical training at the University of Washington, and then, in 2006, joined the Gates Foundation as a senior program officer. There, she became acquainted with Boris Nikolic, who appears to play various roles in the Gates Foundation, Gates’s personal wealth, and Gates’s personal life. The two men reportedly travel and socialize together frequently. They were also professional collaborators, as Nikolic’s name is attached to at least two patents on which Gates is listed as a co-inventor. When Gates made a major investment in the pharmaceutical company Schrödinger, the press release announced that Nikolic would be taking a seat on the board. In 2011, Nikolic and Gates met Epstein for the first time. After the meeting, Epstein emailed Melanie Walker to share the news of the meeting.
This backstory became a major headline in 2019, when a bombshell dropped. Just days before Epstein was found hanged in his jail cell, he amended his will, naming Boris Nikolic as one of his backup executors, putting him in a position of potential responsibility for managing his $577 million estate. The world naturally took an interest in who Nikolic was—and discovered that he was a longtime associate of, if not wingman to, Bill Gates. Nikolic told the press he was “shocked” to have been named an executor, saying he would not take on the role. He also described himself as a victim, saying, “Over the past few years, we have all learned that Epstein was a master deceiver. I now see that his philanthropic proposals were designed to ingratiate himself with my colleagues and me in an attempt to further his own social and financial ambitions. When he failed to achieve his goals, he started to retaliate.”
As Vicky Ward reported this story in Rolling Stone, Epstein’s naming Nikolic as an executor to his will was a final “fuck you” to Bill Gates, with Nikolic calling it “absolutely a retaliatory move.” According to this version of the story, when Epstein put Nikolic’s name in the will, he knew the news media would track the story back to Gates. Yet, in this telling, it has never been made clear what Epstein was retaliating against. Why did he feel so much enmity toward Bill Gates, who has repeatedly minimized his relationship with Epstein? Gates’s account of his breakup with Epstein was that, as they continued to discuss a possible philanthropic partnership, the foundation lost confidence in him and walked away. There was never any account of the two men having a major falling-out. Gates has claimed that he barely knew Epstein and that their minor relationship was entirely professional in nature, not personal. Yet, we’re also told that their failed philanthropic partnership stuck so deep in Epstein’s craw that it was top of mind two days before his suicide, leading him to redraw his will to take Bill Gates down. It is a difficult narrative to follow, and it seems more than reasonable to ask whether there is more to this story.
One of the most important takeaways from the Gates-Epstein saga is the Gates Foundation’s apparent inability to address the questionable behavior of its founder. As some large corporations took swift action to address allegations related to Epstein, the foundation sat on its hands.
Outside the foundation, a number of Epstein’s associates faced some level of accountability. Top leaders vacated high-profile corporate positions—at Barclays, Apollo Global Management, and L Brands—under intense public pressure over their ties to the sex offender. Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal duties. President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, Alex Acosta, stepped down under criticism related to his role as a former prosecutor in Epstein’s sweetheart plea deal in 2008. The optics present corporate America, the British monarchy, and the Trump administration as all having a stronger moral compass than the world’s most celebrated humanitarian charity.
What made the foundation’s silence especially troubling was the fact that, after the Epstein story broke, Bill Gates faced a number of allegations of personal misconduct from female employees at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation. He denied or downplayed the allegations as they emerged in rapid succession throughout 2021.
Gates did admit to one relationship with a Microsoft employee, claiming it had ended “amicably.” Yet that admission came after Microsoft publicly stated that it had received a “concern” from the employee—who had specifically asked that Melinda French Gates be shown the letter she sent to Microsoft about her relationship to Bill Gates. “A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation,” the company noted. “Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”
Microsoft later acknowledged another incident, in which Bill Gates emailed an “inappropriate” and “flirtatious” message to a midlevel employee, asking her to meet him outside the office. When the story broke, Gates’s personal spokesperson responded, “These claims are false, recycled rumors from sources who have no direct knowledge, and in some cases have significant conflicts of interest.”
