Trending Now: admits to affairs and calls Epstein ties a ‘huge mistake’ – Fans React

The Epstein files are not light reading. They are heavy, disturbing and a brutal reminder of how power can protect darkness for far too long.

As more documents surface, the ripple effect continues to touch some of the world’s most recognisable names. This week, that spotlight swung firmly onto Bill Gates.

During a staff town hall at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Microsoft co-founder addressed renewed scrutiny over his past relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

According to reports, Gates admitted to two affairs with Russian women during his marriage to Melinda French Gates and apologised for what he described as a “huge mistake” in spending time with Epstein.

“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” he says. And no, we’re not buying it.

The renewed controversy stems from a tranche of documents released by the US Justice Department. Among them were draft emails written by Epstein in which he claimed Gates had contracted a sexually transmitted infection from “Russian girls” and sought help to conceal it.

A spokesperson for Gates had previously dismissed Epstein’s claims as “absolutely absurd and completely false.” Still, Gates admitted to having the affairs: one with a Russian bridge player, the other with a nuclear physicist he met through business. He acknowledged that Epstein was aware of these relationships.

Gates also confirmed that after first meeting Epstein in 2011, years after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor, they continued to remain in contact until 2014.

He insisted that he never spent time with Epstein’s victims and never stayed on Epstein’s infamous island. 

Speaking to his staff, Gates said it was a “huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and apologised to anyone affected by his association, adding, “I apologise to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.”

The damage, however, is reputational. Gates himself conceded that the association casts a shadow over the foundation’s global health work. For an organisation that relies heavily on trust, that shadow matters.

Long before the Epstein files reignited scrutiny around Bill Gates, his name had already been circulating in conspiracy spaces for years. Not quietly. Not occasionally. Constantly.

When Covid-19 hit, the theories went into overdrive. One of the loudest claimed that vaccines funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would secretly contain microchips to track the global population.

The claim leaned heavily on Gates’ 2015 TED Talk, where he warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic. In conspiracy circles, that warning was reframed as evidence of foreknowledge or worse, orchestration. Public health planning became, in some corners of the internet, “proof” of a master plan.

Then came the digital ID panic. Because the foundation has supported research into digital health records in lower-income countries, systems designed to track vaccinations and improve healthcare delivery, online forums twisted that into a dystopian surveillance scheme.

Another theory fixated on population control. For years, Gates has spoken about reducing childhood mortality rates and expanding access to contraception in developing countries.

His argument has consistently been that when children survive and families have access to healthcare and education, birth rates stabilise naturally. In conspiracy culture, that message was stripped of context and repackaged as an alleged agenda to reduce the global population deliberately.

Climate, food and technology became additional strands. His investments in alternative energy, synthetic foods and artificial intelligence were cast as part of a larger plot to manipulate global systems, engineer scarcity or control human behaviour.

Even unrelated technological advances, like 5G networks, were tied to Gates in some corners of the internet, with claims that he was behind the spread of Covid-19 or other global crises.

The Epstein files don’t prove Gates committed the crimes Epstein did. But they do show a man who repeatedly surrounded himself with predators, hid his own transgressions, and failed to act responsibly.

The Epstein files continue to expose uncomfortable truths about power and proximity. Gates maintains that he was not involved in any criminal activity.

Yet the lesson is glaring: in a world already primed to distrust billionaires, even the perception of poor judgement can undo years of carefully built credibility.