Melinda French Gates told CBS that her Ex, Bill Gates’s, relationship with convicted pedophile and sex trafficker for the rich, Jeffery Epstein, played a big role in their divorce. In the interview, French Gates says she made sure Bill knew how she felt.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” French Gates said, adding that she only met “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.”
“I regretted it the second I walked in the door,” French Gates, 57, said. “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. … My heart breaks for these women. That’s how I felt, and I am an older woman. … He was awful.”
Bill Gates, 66, told CBS in a statement that his relationship with Epstein was a “mistake.”
“Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply,” said the Microsoft co-founder. “It was a substantial error in judgement.”
In her interview, French Gates also addressed an alleged affair her husband had with an employee, saying she thought they had gotten through it before their divorce.
“I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that,” she said. “It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there where I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”
Asked if her ex-husband had many affairs during their marriage, French Gates answered cryptically, saying, “Those are questions Bill needs to answer.”
During an interview with PBS last year, Gates said he regretted having dinners with Epstein while trying to raise money for his foundation. The dinners took place after Epstein’s child sex conviction. “Those meetings were a mistake,” Gates said. “They didn’t result in what he purported, and I cut them off. That goes back a long time ago now. There’s nothing new on that.”
But Gates can’t keep his story straight. In another report, he claimed that he and Epstein did not have a business together and were not friends. While WaPo uncovered that Gates met with Epstein, a lot… and so did his employees at Microsoft.