Bill Gates Admits Meetings with Jeffrey Epstein Were ‘Huge Mistake’

Appearing Wednesday on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 program, billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said it was a “huge mistake” to meet with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

(Watch from 1:41)

A transcript is as follows: 

ANDERSON COOPER: There’s a couple of things being reported that have been out there that I want to ask you about. I think it’s no one’s business what happens in a person’s marriage. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both reported in recent months that Melinda was concerned about a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time when you met him in 2011, had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. The Times reported that she hired divorce attorneys around the time in October 2019, when that contact with Epstein became public. Can you explain your relationship with Epstein? Was there ever any concerns about it?

BILL GATES: Certainly. I had several diners with him, hoping what he said about getting billions in philanthropy for global health through contacts that he had might emerge and when it looked like that wasn’t a real thing, that relationship ended. It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there. There were lots of others in that same situation, but I made a mistake.