Jeffrey Epstein threatened to take Bill Gates’ alleged affair with Russian woman public

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, Epstein allegedly blackmailed the tech tycoon when he threatened to expose an alleged affair between Bill Gates and a Russian woman.

The alleged affair supposedly took place after Epstein convinced Gates to participate in a large charitable fund. The woman, who was in her 20s and a bridge player, met Gates around 2010.

Epstein had encountered her in 2013 when she sought funding for an online bridge tutorial platform and sponsored her attendance at a software programming boot camp.

In 2017, after the alleged affair had ended, Epstein sent an email to Gates, asking him to reimburse the cost of the course.

The email was seen as a veiled threat to reveal the alleged affair if Gates didn’t maintain a connection with Epstein.

Gates’ team has moved to suppress the report, stating that he did not repay Epstein for the course and repeatedly denied any financial involvement with Epstein.

“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” a spokeswoman for Gates said.

After Epstein’s sex trafficking empire was exposed, Gates made public comments saying he regretted having any involvement with the so-called philanthropist.

Gates admitted that meeting Epstein had been a “huge mistake,” and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, shared the same sentiment, expressing her disapproval of Gates’s association with Epstein.

At the time, Epstein had been persistently trying to involve Gates in a charitable fund he was establishing with JPMorgan Chase. However, Gates refused to participate in the endeavour, which ultimately failed.

The meetings between Gates and Epstein started in 2011 and were primarily focused on philanthropy, according to the report.

However, the meetings had occurred years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Gates further distanced himself from Epstein following the latter’s 2019 sex trafficking charges and subsequent death in custody.

In a separate incident in 2021, Gates admitted to having a separate affair almost two decades ago after an investigation uncovered allegations of a romantic relationship between Gates and a female staffer, leading to his resignation from Microsoft’s board.

This latest revelation regarding Epstein’s threat to Gates adds to the growing list of news reports connecting Epstein to various billionaires.

Epstein died in 2019 in a New York City jail cell while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges. He had been accused of sexually abusing underage women for years at his properties in Palm Beach, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Earlier this year, Gates was pressed on his relationship with Epstein and attempted to downplay his involvement with the billionaire.

An uncomfortable Gates was asked by ABC 7:30 host Sarah Ferguson whether he regretted maintaining a relationship with the now dead Epstein “against Melinda’s wishes”.

“I will say for over the 100th time, I shouldn’t have had dinners with him,” he answered.

“I had dinner with him and that‘s all.”

When pressed on whether he regretted the relationship or “acquaintance” with Epstein, Mr Gates reiterated he regretted that the pair “had dinner”.

Ferguson asked: “Epstein had a way of sexually compromising people, is that what Melinda was warning you about?”

“No. I had dinner with him and that’s all,” Mr Gates replied.

Ms French-Gates told CBS last year that she “did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein”.

Gates has remained a prominent public figure in recent years, offering a number of purported pandemic solutions amid the Covid-19 crisis.

He has recommended governments spend up to a billion dollars per year conducting “germ games” to further prepare the world for future epidemics and biosecurity issues.

Gates has long been a voice of caution against the dangers of viruses affecting the global community, playing a major role in the US response to the current Covid-19 pandemic via the World Economic Forum’s Epidemics Readiness Accelerator.

In October 2019, a month before Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with The Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security to conduct “a high-level simulation exercise for pandemic preparedness and response”, labelled Event 201.

In early 2022, Gates applauded Australia’s response to the pandemic while speaking at the inaugural Munich Security Council. He claimed Australia’s ability to quickly implement harsh restrictions allowed the island nation to suppress Covid cases early on.

Gates has been a strong supporter of stricter pandemic policies, claiming they will be pivotal in curbing future outbreaks of the infectious disease.

“If every country does what Australia did, then you wouldn’t be calling [the next outbreak] a pandemic,” he said.