Bill Gates spoke directly with employees of the Gates Foundation in a scheduled town hall and "took responsibility for his actions" connected to his interactions with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a Gates Foundation spokesperson said in a written response to inquiries.
The comments from the foundation came after a Wall Street Journal report that described remarks Gates made to staff about his ties to Epstein. The Journal said Gates apologized during the meeting for spending time with Epstein and for involving Gates Foundation executives in meetings with the convicted sex offender.
Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice show that Gates and Epstein met on multiple occasions following Epstein's prison term to discuss possible expansions of Gates' philanthropic work. According to the Journal report, Gates told staff it was a major mistake to have met with Epstein and to have had foundation personnel drawn into those discussions.
Quoted in the Journal report, Gates said: "I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made." The newspaper also reported Gates acknowledged two affairs with Russian women that Epstein later learned about, while asserting those episodes did not involve Epstein's victims.
In that account, Gates told staff: "I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit," as he discussed the matter at the town hall. The DOJ documents that have been released include photographs showing Gates posing with women whose faces have been redacted in the public materials.
Gates has previously characterized his interactions with Epstein as centered on philanthropic discussions and has said that meeting Epstein was an error in judgment. The Journal reported that Gates explained some of the images in the DOJ files were photos Epstein asked him to take with Epstein's assistants after their meetings.
"To be clear I never spent any time with victims, the women around him," Gates told the staff during the session, according to the Journal's account.
A Gates Foundation spokesperson told Reuters that Gates had held the town hall as scheduled and answered questions on a range of topics, including the release of the DOJ files concerning Epstein. "In the town hall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions," the spokesperson said, adding that the foundation's public statement reflected what Gates shared at the meeting and that it would not expand further on the Journal report.
Earlier this month, the Gates Foundation reiterated that it did not make any financial payments to Epstein and that Epstein was never employed by the foundation.
The fallout around Gates' contacts with Epstein has coincided with other recent developments: Gates withdrew from a planned keynote appearance at India's AI Impact Summit just hours before he was due on stage last week. The Gates Foundation, which Gates chairs and which he and his then-wife established in 2000, remains one of the largest global funders of health initiatives.
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