The billionaire Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, has become the world’s leading global health philanthropist, but his overture to the late, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt him, most recently with the release of photos Friday featuring him in the American financier’s entourage.
Gates appears in two images Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released, the first batch in what’s expected to be 95,000 photos. The committee is reviewing documents from the Epstein estate as part of its ongoing investigation.
Epstein does not appear in the two pictures Gates is in.
In one, Gates is standing next to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.
In 2019, Mountbatten-Windsor was accused in a civil lawsuit of sexually assaulting Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, but he denied the allegations. Mountbatten-Windsor has faced backlash for his friendship with Epstein, but has not been charged with a crime in either the U.K. or the U.S.
A second picture shows a younger Gates next to a man who appears to be one of Epstein’s longtime pilots.
Representatives for Gates and his global health philanthropy, the Gates Foundation, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Gates has said he had several dinners with Epstein, who promised to get his wealthy connections to donate money to global health. When that didn’t happen, Gates cut off the dinners, Gates told PBS NewsHour in 2021.
“Those meetings were a mistake,” Gates said.
Gates’ former wife, Melinda French Gates, has said she didn’t like her then-husband meeting with Epstein and suggested those meetings contributed to the couple’s 2021 divorce. French Gates told CBS in a 2022 interview she met Epstein once, “because I wanted to see who this man was. I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door. He was abhorrent, he was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards.”
When Bill Gates was asked in a January 2023 interview with ABC Australia whether French Gates had warned him against ties with Epstein, because “Epstein had a way of sexually compromising people,” as the anchor put it, Bill Gates replied: “No! I had dinner with him, and that’s all.”
An interview with Gates POLITICO published Friday was conducted before the release of the photos.
