How many times did Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates meet with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before Epstein died in 2019? Just a few months after Epstein’s death, we learned about three meetings between Gates and Epstein from an article in the New York Times. But an explosive new report from the Daily Beast claims the two men met “dozens of times” between 2011 and 2014.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Beast all published new articles Sunday about Bill Gates and his impending divorce from Melinda Gates, which was announced on May 3. The Times and Journal reports focus primarily on unwanted advances Bill made on women at Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, including news that Bill stepped down from the Microsoft board in 2020 over an alleged affair Bill had with a Microsoft employee in 2000.
But the Daily Beast report is arguably even more strange and alleges that not only did Bill meet Epstein dozens of times, Epstein even advised Bill on his potential divorce.
It’s been widely reported at this point that Melinda met with divorce attorneys after the New York Times article in 2019. The articles all suggest the relationship between Epstein and Bill was one of the reasons Melinda wanted to end their 27-year marriage. But we haven’t, until now, gotten a proper accounting of how many Times Bill and Epstein met over the years.
From the new report at the Daily Beast:
The billionaire met Epstein dozens of times starting in 2011 and continuing through to 2014 mostly at the financier’s Manhattan home — a substantially higher number than has been previously reported. Their conversations took place years before Bill and Melinda Gates announced this month that they were splitting up.
Gates, in turn, encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media following his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and discussed Epstein becoming involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
An unnamed representative for Bill Gates told the Daily Beast that the news outlet’s “characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated.”
The reference to “philanthropy” is about the reason that Gates said he was meeting with Epstein: According to the Microsoft billionaire, it was all about getting Epstein to connect Gates with powerful people who might be interested in contributing to the Gates Foundation.
The rep also said that “any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is false,” according to the Daily Beast.
Where does this new information about “dozens” of meetings fit in the timeline that’s been developing since 2019? For one thing, it will likely bring new scrutiny on reported flight that Gates took on Epstein’s plane in March of 2013, especially since the two men apparently first met in 2011, three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges in Florida: one count of “solicitation of prostitution” and one count of “solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.”
The New York Times first reported in October of 2019 that there were “at least three” times that Epstein and Bill Gates met up, something we now know was likely the most conservative number the newspaper could publish:
In fact, beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Epstein died in jail on August 10, 2019 in an incident that was reported as a suicide. But Epstein’s connections to powerful people in the world of politic and entertainment has led to plenty of conspiracy theories about Epstein actually dying at the hands of people who didn’t want him to talk.
How many times did Gates and Epstein actually meet? That number is still up in the air, even if we’ve narrowed it down to “dozens.” But if this Daily Beast report proves true, we can probably expect more revelations in the coming days and weeks.