Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates sat before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday for nearly six hours, answering questions about his ties to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and telling lawmakers that the relationship he once maintained with Epstein was "a grave error in judgment" that jeopardized his philanthropic work.
The closed-door interview on Capitol Hill, first detailed by CBS News, marks one of the highest-profile appearances yet in the committee's ongoing examination of the government's handling of the Epstein case and the powerful figures who orbited the late financier. Gates is the latest in a growing list of prominent witnesses, joining former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, and billionaires Howard Lutnick, Les Wexner, and Leon Black.
Gates arrived with a prepared opening statement and a carefully constructed narrative: that his dealings with Epstein were limited to discussions about philanthropy, that he never witnessed criminal conduct, and that Epstein later tried to blackmail him with knowledge of his extramarital affairs. Whether that account satisfies the committee, or the public, remains an open question.
In his opening statement, provided to CBS News, Gates framed his interactions with Epstein as strictly professional and confined to a narrow window. He said he was introduced to Epstein through "trusted individuals" at a time when Epstein was working to establish a charitable fund. Between 2011 and 2014, Gates said, the two discussed "potential giving structures" related to Gates' philanthropic work.
Those discussions, Gates told the committee, "were a dead-end."
He went further, denying any social relationship or visits to Epstein's most notorious properties:
"I want to state very clearly: I never witnessed nor had any indication that Epstein was engaged in ongoing criminal conduct. I never went to his island, his ranch, or his Florida home."
Gates also stated flatly: "I have never victimized anyone. While he may have sought to foster a personal relationship, I was never interested in that and never reciprocated."
The committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, has been pressing forward on Epstein-related hearings for months. Gates was invited to testify in March. A spokesperson said before the hearing that Gates "welcomes the opportunity to appear before the Committee" and was "looking forward to answering all the committee's questions to support their important work."
The most striking portion of Gates' testimony concerned what happened after the philanthropic discussions ended. Gates told lawmakers that Epstein somehow obtained "sensitive information about my personal life, including the fact that I had been unfaithful in my marriage."
Gates was blunt about what followed:
"Epstein was working to use information about my infidelities, in addition to many lies that he layered on top, to pressure me to re-engage with him."
"He was unsuccessful in this effort," Gates added, "but it shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda."
That account raises as many questions as it answers. Gates did not publicly identify who introduced him to Epstein. He did not specify the "many lies" Epstein allegedly fabricated. And the timeline leaves a gap: if the philanthropic relationship ended in 2014, and text messages from 2017 show Epstein still trying to pitch Gates on a donor-advised fund, the question of how long Epstein maintained influence, or attempted to, lingers.
The documents already in the public record complicate Gates' preferred framing. In July 2013, squarely within the period Gates described as focused on charitable giving, Epstein sent himself a pair of emails containing unverified allegations that Gates had extramarital "sex with Russian girls" that resulted in a sexually transmitted infection requiring antibiotic treatment. One email alleged Gates also sought to "surreptitiously give" antibiotics to his then-wife, Melinda Gates.
A Gates spokesperson told CBS News in January that those claims were "absolutely absurd and completely false."
But the Wall Street Journal reported in February that Gates, during a town hall with Gates Foundation staff, admitted he "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." Gates apologized to foundation staff that same month for his ties to Epstein.
So the affairs were real. The specific details Epstein recorded remain unverified. And the fact that Epstein was compiling this kind of material on Gates, in self-addressed emails, no less, while the two were supposedly engaged in nothing more than dry philanthropic discussions tells its own story about the nature of Epstein's relationships with powerful men.
The pattern of powerful figures facing public reckoning for conduct they hoped would stay private is hardly unique to Gates. A federal judge recently received only a private reprimand after being caught in a courthouse scandal, a reminder that accountability often arrives late, if at all, for those at the top.
Perhaps the most revealing documents are the 2017 text messages between Epstein and an apparent adviser to Gates. Three years after Gates says the relationship ended, Epstein was still working the edges, trying to pitch Gates on a tax-deductible donor-advised fund that Epstein wanted to operate.
The adviser's messages to Epstein paint a picture of a man caught between a persistent predator and a wife who wanted nothing to do with him:
"He wants to talk to you but his wife won't let him."
Other messages from the adviser included "he loves you," "he says hi," and "he feels bad about the [donor-advised fund] btw He thought great idea but wife wouldn't allow."
Gates said Epstein was also involved in negotiating an exit package for an employee leaving Gates' private office. CBS News reported that Epstein exchanged frequent emails with former Gates adviser Boris Nikolic, and that Epstein appeared to be acting as a middleman between Nikolic and Gates during those negotiations.
For a relationship Gates describes as a dead-end charitable discussion that wrapped up in 2014, Epstein's fingerprints show up in a remarkable number of places, personnel matters, fund pitches, and leverage operations, well beyond that date.
Gates' appearance is part of a broader effort by the House Oversight Committee to examine not just Epstein's crimes but the institutional failures that allowed him to operate for so long. The committee has already interviewed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, billionaires Les Wexner and Leon Black, both Clintons, Maxwell, and Bondi.
Before entering the hearing Wednesday, Chairman Comer said he wants acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to appear before the committee in July. He also said he intends to invite prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz to testify about his own relationship with Epstein.
The committee's work has generated intense public interest, and the hearings have occasionally produced the kind of confrontational moments that Capitol Hill observers have come to expect from high-stakes oversight proceedings. Whether Gates' closed-door session produced fireworks or careful lawyering, the public does not yet know, no transcript or recording has been released.
Gates released a statement following his testimony, saying he "appreciated the opportunity to meet with the House Oversight Committee today and to answer all of their questions." He added: "I support the release of all the files and hope my participation contributes to getting justice for the victims."
That last line, "getting justice for the victims", is the right sentiment. But it sits uneasily alongside a testimony that, by Gates' own account, describes years of engagement with a man whose criminal conduct was already a matter of public record. Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges in Florida in 2008. Gates says his interactions began in 2011. The charitable-discussion framing may be legally precise. It is not, on its face, a profile in due diligence.
Gates and Melinda Gates divorced in 2021. The revelations about Epstein's role in Gates' personal and professional life have continued to surface in the years since, through document releases, leaked emails, and now congressional testimony.
The broader question the committee is chasing is not just what Gates knew or did. It is how a convicted sex offender managed to embed himself so deeply in the lives of so many powerful people, and why the institutions that should have raised alarms failed to do so for so long.
Comer's plan to bring in Blanche and Dershowitz signals that the committee is far from finished. The witness list keeps growing. The documents keep surfacing. And the public appetite for answers about Epstein's network of enablers, associates, and beneficiaries shows no sign of fading.
Gates called his Epstein meetings "a grave error in judgment." Maybe so. But errors in judgment are what you call a bad investment. When a billionaire spends years in the orbit of a known sex offender, and that offender ends up with blackmail material, personnel access, and a direct line to your advisers, the rest of us are entitled to ask whether "error in judgment" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.