Bill Gates Says Epstein Plotted to Blackmail Him Over Affairs

Bill Gates sat in a closed room on Capitol Hill for almost six hours and answered questions about Jeffrey Epstein. On June 24, 2026, the House Oversight Committee released the full 138-page transcript of that interview. The part everyone latched onto: Gates told lawmakers that Epstein was building a plan to blackmail him over a string of extramarital affairs.

Gates was careful with his words. He said he was never actually blackmailed. But after reading the emails the Justice Department dug up, he admitted it sure looked like Epstein was heading that way. This is the Microsoft founder, the guy worth a hundred billion dollars, telling Congress he got tangled up with a convicted sex offender and almost got squeezed for it. Let's go through what he actually said.

Epstein Was "Brainstorming" How to Blackmail Him

Here's the weird twist. Epstein never sent Gates a single threatening message. Instead, investigators found draft emails that Epstein appears to have written to himself back in 2013. They were full of graphic, unverified claims about Gates, and they falsely said Gates had caught a sexually transmitted infection.

Gates told the panel those drafts looked like Epstein practicing. "I think that Epstein, when he was writing emails to himself, took every potential negative thing he knew, and some that are completely false, and he put those into draft emails to himself," he said. He told lawmakers Epstein mixed real facts with "literally dozens of false things." His read on it was simple: "I was not blackmailed," but the notes "raises a serious probability that he contemplated blackmailing me." According to his testimony, the whole effort failed because Gates just cut him off.

Three Affairs, Including a Russian Bridge Player

To explain how Epstein got leverage, Gates had to lay out his own personal life. He acknowledged three extramarital affairs. One was with Mila Antonova, a Russian competitive bridge player he met at card events. One was with Karima Nigmatulina, a Russian nuclear physicist. And there was an earlier one with a medical entrepreneur, Dr. Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt.

Gates made one point over and over: Epstein did not set him up with these women. None of them came through Epstein. As the transcript shows, that detail knocks down the theory that Epstein engineered the affairs to trap him. Epstein just found out about two of them later and tried to use that knowledge. The bridge player connection had actually surfaced before. Reporting from 2023 said Epstein emailed Gates in 2017 asking to be paid back for a software coding course he'd funded for Antonova, a message that carried an unspoken threat to expose the affair.

The Adviser Who Connected Everyone

If there's one name that runs through this entire mess, it's Dr. Boris Nikolic. He was Gates' chief science adviser, a guy Gates trusted enough to use as a cover story. On one trip to London, Gates told Nikolic to act as his alibi so he could quietly meet one of the women. "One time it was a scheduling thing, when we were in London, where I said to him I was going to disappear and wanted him to show that I was meeting with him at that time," Gates testified.

Nikolic was also the person who introduced Gates to Epstein in 2011. And Nikolic was tight with Epstein himself. When Nikolic started leaving the Gates Foundation in 2013, he brought Epstein in to help negotiate his exit. That's when Epstein flew to Seattle and showed up at the Gates Ventures office. After that, Nikolic started sending "veiled" emails that hinted he knew more than he should. Gates told the committee he was floored to learn from the released files that Nikolic was named an executor in Epstein's will. That surprised him "a lot," he said.

Why Gates Was Even Talking to Epstein

So why does one of the richest men alive sit down with a registered sex offender? Gates says it was about money for charity. He thought Epstein had real connections to other wealthy people who might pour cash into the Gates Foundation's global health projects. That was the pitch. Gates admitted he knew about Epstein's "bad reputation stemming from his criminal conviction" before they ever met.

He said he knew the conviction was "of a sexual nature," but claimed he never looked into the details. "I knew that it was of a sexual nature, but, no, I don't think I knew, dug into the specifics, although I probably should have," Gates told lawmakers. He said he was so locked in on raising money for health work that he "allowed that goal to override my better judgment." The kicker? It went nowhere. Gates says Epstein never delivered a single donor, so he ended contact in December 2014.

A Dozen Meetings, Dinners, and a Magic Show

Gates broke down the relationship by the numbers. He met Epstein 12 to 14 times total between 2011 and 2014, plus a couple of Skype calls. He counted three meetings in 2011, two in 2012, and "five or six" in each of 2013 and 2014. The locations included Epstein's homes in New York and Paris, the Four Seasons in New York, and a spot in Washington, D.C.

Some were dinners. One of them included former Barclays CEO Jes Staley and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The magician David Blaine showed up to perform at one. But Gates insisted Epstein "certainly wasn't a friend" and said he turned down every social invite, including repeated offers to visit Epstein's island in the Caribbean. There was even an invite, passed through Nikolic, to a Paris strip club called the Crazy Horse. Gates says he said no to all of it. Looking back, per the released transcript, he called that Seattle meeting about Nikolic "kind of a worthless meeting."

Melinda Saw It Coming

One of the more human moments in the testimony involved Gates' ex-wife, Melinda French Gates. The two of them met Epstein at a dinner in 2013, and Melinda's reaction was instant and bad. Gates said she had a "very negative reaction" and pushed him to either hold Epstein to his promises or walk away completely.

Gates basically admitted she nailed it. "She definitely had a very negative impression of him. Her instinct about arrogant men, or I'm not sure what, but she certainly showed better judgment than I did," he testified. He also told the panel that the Justice Department files released in January only deepened his embarrassment. "You know, the foolishness of my spending time with him is about 100 times higher after I see the January emails," Gates said. He has called the whole thing a "grave error in judgment."

What Gates Says He Never Saw

Lawmakers pressed hard on the obvious question: was Gates ever around Epstein's victims? Gates said he never witnessed any sexual misconduct, never discussed sex with Epstein, was never offered young women or girls, and never visited the island, ranch, or Florida home. He said the only women he saw appeared to be Epstein's administrative assistants, and that Epstein sometimes asked him to be photographed with them at the end of a meeting. "I believe they did not look to be underage," Gates said.

Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia pushed back. The committee's investigation found that some of Epstein's own employees were abused, which makes it hard for anyone to flatly say they were never near a victim. Gates eventually allowed that he "may have been in the presence of victims." He also told lawmakers he never asked any victim to sign a nondisclosure agreement and never paid any settlement. According to his account, after the relationship ended, Epstein once emailed asking for "reimbursement" for expenses tied to one of the women. Gates told his top deputy at Gates Ventures, Larry Cohen, they would never pay a cent.

Who's Up Next

Gates isn't the only big name in front of this committee. The Epstein Transparency Act, passed in late 2025, forced the Justice Department to release millions of files. That release is what dragged Gates into the hot seat in the first place. The committee, chaired by Republican Rep. James Comer, has already interviewed more than a dozen people, including former President Bill Clinton and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

More are coming. The panel plans to question billionaire Leon Black, former Clinton aide Doug Band, and Jes Staley this summer. Democrats also want law professor Alan Dershowitz and want to subpoena acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. The same day Gates' transcript came out, so did the interview of Epstein's longtime assistant Lesley Groff, who arranged massages with young women and who lawmakers said connected Epstein and Donald Trump by phone multiple times over a decade when Trump was a private citizen.

Gates, for his part, says he wants the files out. In a statement after the interview, he said he supports "the release of all the files" and hopes his cooperation helps get "justice for the victims." He has not been accused of any crime. But the 138-page record makes one thing clear in his own words: a few meetings about charity money turned into one of the costliest mistakes of his public life.