Bill Gates told staffers at his charitable foundation on Tuesday that he had "two affairs with Russian women" during his marriage to Melinda French Gates, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Microsoft co-founder also addressed his ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, acknowledging he flew on a private plane with Epstein and spent time with him "in the US and abroad."
Gates, 70, framed the town hall as a moment of candor. A foundation spokesperson said he "spoke candidly" and "took responsibility for his actions." Whether that characterization holds up depends on how much weight you give to admissions that arrive years after a divorce, a cascade of reporting, and mounting public scrutiny.
According to the New York Post, Gates identified both women by profession, not by name:
I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities.
The bridge player has been previously identified in reporting as Mila Antonova, whom Gates met in 2010 at a tournament. The identity of the nuclear physicist remains unnamed in the source material.
On the Epstein front, Gates acknowledged spending time with the disgraced financier in New York, Germany, France, and Washington, though he said he never visited Epstein's island. His defense was direct:
I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit.
He added:
To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him.
Gates first met Epstein in 2011, after Epstein's Florida conviction for procuring a child for prostitution. That timeline matters. This was not a case of an old acquaintance whose crimes surfaced later. Gates chose to build a relationship with a man already convicted of a sex crime involving a minor.
The entanglement between Gates and Epstein ran deeper than casual socializing. Epstein met Antonova while seeking financial backers for a bridge academy, and he paid for her to attend a software coding school. That connection placed Epstein at the intersection of Gates' personal indiscretions and his professional network.
Epstein exploited the position. In a July 4, 2013, email to Boris Nikolic, Gates' chief adviser for science and technology, Epstein named two women he alleged Gates had affairs with. He described them as "becoming overnight sensations." The implication was not subtle.
Epstein's leverage became explicit in another message, where he warned:
Bill risks going from richest man to biggest hypocrite, Melinda a laughing stock, pledges will disappear as a result.
Weeks later, Epstein sent a "resignation" email to himself in which he seemed to be writing as Nikolic. The email referenced being "caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill." Nikolic has claimed the emails were not written on his behalf or at his request.
So the picture that emerges is this: a convicted sex offender possessed compromising information about one of the world's wealthiest and most influential philanthropists, and he wielded it. Gates now calls the whole association "foolish."
Gates offered an apology at the town hall, though its scope was notably narrow:
I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake I made.
He also acknowledged that his behavior stood in direct opposition to the work of his foundation:
It definitely is the opposite of the values of the foundation and the goals of the foundation.
He gave his ex-wife credit for seeing what he apparently refused to. "To give her credit, she was always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing," Gates said. French Gates filed for divorce in 2021, ending their 27-year marriage. Whatever skepticism she expressed clearly went unheeded for years.
As far back as 2025, Gates told the Journal that spending time with Epstein was "a huge mistake," saying he "thought it would help me with global health philanthropy" but that "it failed to do that."
This is the part that deserves the most scrutiny. Gates' stated justification for associating with a convicted child sex offender was philanthropy. He believed Epstein could help him with global health initiatives. The richest man in the world, with access to every government, institution, and network on the planet, decided that the one person who could unlock philanthropic progress was Jeffrey Epstein.
That explanation asks a great deal of the listener.
Gates has spent decades cultivating an image as the world's most generous billionaire, a man whose foundation shapes global health policy, education reform, and agricultural development across continents. That image functions as a kind of diplomatic immunity in elite circles. Criticize Gates, and you're criticizing the fight against malaria. Question his judgment, and you're undermining vaccine distribution.
But philanthropy is not a character reference. And the scale of one's charitable giving does not insulate the giver from accountability for the company he kept, the affairs he conducted, or the leverage he handed to a predator.
The Gates-Epstein saga is not an isolated story. It fits a pattern that the public has watched unfold for years: powerful men who occupy the commanding heights of progressive philanthropy and technocratic governance, who lecture the rest of the country about values, equity, and responsibility, and whose private conduct bears no resemblance to the sermons they deliver.
Gates championed global health while socializing with a convicted pedophile. He built a foundation dedicated to human dignity while conducting affairs that ultimately gave a predator leverage over him. He positioned himself as a moral authority on everything from climate change to pandemic response while his own judgment was compromised in ways he now admits were "foolish."
The town hall apology may satisfy foundation staffers who need to believe in the mission. It should not satisfy anyone else. Candor that arrives only after years of reporting, a divorce, document releases from the House Oversight Committee, and DOJ photo disclosures is not transparency. It is damage control on a delayed fuse.
Melinda saw it. The public sees it now. The only question is why it took this long for Gates to say what everyone already knew.
