Files released by the Justice Department last week show Epstein had drafted notes to and about the billionaire, suggesting Gates had engaged in extramarital affairs, although representatives for Gates have repeatedly shot down the allegations.
“These claims—from a proven, disgruntled liar—are absolutely absurd and completely false,” Gates representatives told the New York Times. “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”
Still, French Gates said in an NPR interview yesterday that Gates and others mentioned in the Epstein files need to address the allegations.
“Whatever questions remain there … for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me,” she told NPR. “And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”
Gates donated a record $8 billion to Pivotal, a move that was mapped out in their divorce settlement, according to a tax filing, as previously reported by the New York Times’ DealBook.
French Gates told NPR that Gates and others referenced in the newly released Justice Department files “have to answer” for what’s described in the documents, and said she felt “unbelievable sadness” about what the files show.
“No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No girl,” French Gates said. “I mean, it’s just—it’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages.” (French Gates’ daughters are entrepreneur Phoebe Gates, 23, and medical student Jennifer Gates, 29.)
French Gates also said the details shown in the recent Epstein files reopen “very, very painful times” in her marriage, and underscore a broader societal “reckoning” over how powerful men enabled Epstein’s abuse.
French Gates has previously acknowledged her unease about her ex-husband’s relationship with Epstein.
The fresh Epstein disclosures and French Gates’ insistence that Gates and others must address the allegations directly highlight how reputational risk can follow even the most established philanthropists long after business and personal ties are severed. But now French Gates controls one of the world’s best-capitalized women’s rights philanthropies, funded, in no small part, by a record-setting divorce payment from a man whose conduct is now back under a magnifying glass.
