Is Bill Gates an child-abuser, sex abuser, and all the things that come under his association with Epstein.
Melinda Gates isn’t saying either way, but she has re-stated that her divorce was in part because Bill did not cut off Epstein.
In the current batch of files, we see that Epstein planned an email to Bill about a STD Bill got from a girl…and how Bill wanted drugs he could slip his wife in case he infected her.
Today, we have a response from Bill and he denies everything.
Unless someone was there and says under oath they saw him with an underage girl, it’s pure speculation. And whether you choose to believe Bill Gates or not is a personal choice.
I really hope he wasn’t involved. Compared to our modern asshole billionaires, he seemed relatively sane – old money, almost – and it would be sad if he were just another one in disguise.
Can we pretty please just have our regular genius billionaire playboy philanthropists without a side of pedophelia and Nazism?
I don’t believe him when he says it’s all baseless falsehoods. That doesn’t mean I think he necessarily abused underage girls. But I’d say it’s pretty certain he engaged in sleazy and likely illegal activity of some sort.
His wife didn’t divorce him because he had an innocent friendship with an unbeknownst-to-him sexual predator. She knows some traumatic shit. My bet is that he abused trafficked women, at a minimum. Because that’s what Jeff did for his pals.
The Epstein stink is something that will never come off anyone involved.
That said, nothing that has come out that I’ve seen is any evidence of illegal activity. The worst thing is the email that Epstein apparently wrote to himself. That’s only proof that Epstein wasn’t just evil, he was also really weird (see: painting of Bill Clinton in a dress).
Epstein somehow had access to hundreds, if not thousands, of prominent men. Prominent men - and women, too - stay prominent by hanging out where other prominent people are and go. All through the year stories appear about a gathering in Aspen or Davos or Venice or the Caribbean or Dubai or parties in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, full of many of these names.
Prominent people don’t live in fear that they will go broke. Losing their prominence is a much more compelling fear. They must see and be seen.
Did he known about Epstein’s actions? Sure. They know that if they scratch the surface of every prominent man some sleaze would ooze out. (All great fortunes start with a crime.) As long as the sleaze isn’t going on in front of them, they’ll stay forever if feasible.
Did Gates “have sexual relations with that woman”, or some women available through Epstein? Probably. We know he had affairs. He said, though, that he only attended dinners with Epstein. That’s also probable. You were a nobody if you didn’t. On the Epstein’s Island? His name is not in the flight logs. Could some after-dinner “mints” had been offered at those dinners? Possible. Is he guilty of sex with underage girls? Unknown; no evidence of that has yet been supplied.
Making young women available to prominent men as a way to hob-nob with the prominent goes back forever. Somewhere in the world it’s happening at this moment. Men with no interest in fashion attend large fashion shows because they know that a sizable percentage of the models, whatever their age, will be available, whether through self-interest or coercion. Epstein’s case is remarkable because he flaunted kinky sex with underage women and we have the receipts. Some of them are real, although they need to be carefully sorted from the fever dreams that police get offered in every public investigation. Being indiscreet is a more major crime among prominent men than any of the legally illegal ones.
Epstein was a registered sex offender since 2008 for the crime of solicitation of prostitution from a minor. If you’re associating with him after that point, you’re doing it will full knowledge that you’re associating with a sex offender. If you even give that a minute of thought, you’d realize someone with Epstein’s money/connections doesn’t have to plead guilty to the worst charge they are faced with. That doesn’t mean you know how bad it actually was, but you know it’s probably not “just a got tricked on the age thing with an escort” he pled guilty to. (to be clear, I’m not trying to downplay what he was actually charged with as not a big deal).
With that, and anyone explaining there association with Epstein, the big picture helps. There’s different categories…
people who just randomly came into contact with him; this is probably unfortunate.
people who hung around him for a long time even though he was a known sex offender;
openly discussed women in a sexual way with him even though he was a known sex offender;
openly discussed sexual abuse, minors, or worse, even though…;
Bill Gates was friendly with Epstein from 2008 - 2017. That’s level 2 verging on level 3 if the draft email contents are to be believed or not.
I don’t put any stock into the recent story about Gates having to beg Epstein for STD meds for his wife. There is no way Gates doesn’t have a concierge who can discreetly get him anything he needs for prescriptions. But as for why Epstein would write fanfic about Gates owing him a favor, I cannot imagine.
Melinda Gates has more class and integrity than Bill ever will. Bill has a good side (his work on ending malaria, other philanthropic pursuits), but he seems morally clueless and bereft in a lot of areas. When Melinda was asked a few days ago about how she felt about the whole situation and Bill’s name being in the files so often, she replied that she most felt for all the girls who suffered and avoided saying anything at all about Bill.
Well, I mean that was a big part of it - she said him admitting to an affair with a staffer was a big impetus to her filing for divorce. The Epstein stuff just added fuel to the fire, but per initial reports it seems it was the NYT piece that mentioned details she had been unaware of (I’m just going to guess that the meetings at Epstein’s townhome were among them) that made her furious. I don’t assume she knows the details of anything particularly salacious, though she might. She could just merely be disgusted by the very real possibility of something uglier and his lying to her (either directly or by omission) about his hanging out with Epstein more than he admitted.
Gates doesn’t seem to have provably hung out on underage-party island and personally I wouldn’t necessarily assume he was raping underage girls (though color me unshocked if that ever comes out). Do I suspect he might have been enticed by Epstein’s rotating collection of party girls in general? I mean, that seems pretty likely given Gates had a reputation as kind of a not all that suave hound, making periodic clumsy advances towards women in the Microsoft orbit.
So I don’t necessarily assume the worst, but would not be surprised by the worst and I figure he’s probably lying at least some. A lot or a little, I dunno.
I don’t know Bill Gates, nor much about him except the large-scale stuff. I haven’t followed his personal life or anything like that, I didn’t even remember that his wife had divorced him, although I probably heard about it at the time (and didn’t care).
So I have no real opinion. Guilty people deny their guilt all the time; so do innocent people. At present I am completely agnostic as to whether he is telling the truth. Frankly, it doesn’t matter all that much to me. He’s not someone I spend much time or energy thinking about. He has never presented himself as some sort of paragon that we ought to admire, follow, and imitate. He’s just a very rich guy who has tried to do some good with some of his money, which puts him miles ahead of lots of other very rich guys.
I have a question: how many of Epstein’s girls were underage? And how young were they?
Legally, there may be no difference between raping a willing 17 year old or a terrified 14 year old. But , geez, there’s a huge difference in the “squick factor”. I can imagine Bill Clinton or Bill Gates with a 17 year old version of a Monica Lewinsky --and I won’t vomit.
But with younger girls, I feel not just disgusted, but scared. These are supposedly respectable men with hugely responsible jobs.
