Melinda French Gates on Bill Gates in Epstein files - 'Painful times in my marriage'
8 months ago by HellsBelle to c/news
Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates has said her ex-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, being named in new files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein dredged up "painful times in my marriage".
She told an NPR podcast she feels "unbelievable sadness" about the Epstein allegations and that the people named in the records, including her former husband, need to answer to it.
"I am so happy to be away from all the muck," she said. The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
Records released by the US justice department include an allegation by Epstein that Bill Gates caught a sexually transmitted disease. He has called the claim "absolutely absurd".
Their divorce process started when their youngest daughter turned 18, so it might be the usual "sticking to a toxic wasteland of a marriage for the children" delusion.
She may have had to sign an NDA for the divorce to go through.
Dunno why y'all are blaming her for shit. She wasn't the one involved with Epstein.
For a lot of (if not most) people, knowing about the heinous shit happening and doing nothing about it (at minimum trying to go public) is an issue nearly as bad as actually participating.
And maybe people have forgotten how to use their critical thinking skills first before jumping on the blame bandwagon.
If you think she was clueless to what's going on, then say it.
Take a stance.
Not blaming,and an NDA to cover illegal shit is enforceable?
I'm not from USA, I don't know how NDAs work there?
No an NDA can't cover withholding information about a crime. Asking someone to not divulge information under an NDA pertaining to a crime, is in itself a crime/an unenforceable nda
The emails don't seem to allege any crimes by Bill Gates, there's nothing about the island etc., it just seems to be alluding to an affair with a Russian woman which already came out a couple years ago, that Epstein knew about and was trying to blackmail Gates about. Unethical but not actually criminal activity on Gates' part. Possible that could be covered by an NDA since it wasn't publicly known yet when they split.
If the NDA used generic language, ie: spouse is barred from sharing any private conversations or information shared within the marriage, it may be covered ... but IANAL so ...
Keep in mind, OP literally pulled the "NDA" thing out of his ass.
America is covered with them. Iirc California is the only state to have banned them.
People aren't blaming her for anything. If all she knew was that she was being cheated on because she suddenly got an STD, that's one thing. What they're saying is, if she knew about Bill going to Epstein to rape children, then she'd be complicit.
An NDA doesn't prevent you from reporting crimes to the relevant authorities. This woman was very much part of the system. She deserves credit for getting out but she's by no means an angel.
Agreed - and who knows how much she actually knew, I highly doubt she knew everything and just the cherry picked version her ex gave her.
Leaving a marriage, especially an abusive (speculation here) one, and especially when you’re raising children, and (yes one more) especially to someone as rich as he is no easy, simple, or fast task.
Dunno why y’all are blaming her for shit. She wasn’t the one involved with Epstein.
She knew what was happening and didn't tell us.
Don't be a fool.
I believe that she divorced him after the Epstein thing first blew up and it was because of that.
Well, that and maybe the STD Bill gave her .
she probably knew or at least highly suspected he was involved. his "charity initiative" always seemed disengenious.
I mean he's pretty heavily involved in charitable giving. It doesn't seem surprising to me he would try to get some charity money out of Epstein. Maybe ill-advised because Epstein doesn't seem like he was a charitable type..
Holy shit some of these comments are fucking gross and victim-blamey in here. Why the fuck is Melinda the target here any differently than the victims themselves who didn't speak up until later?
I think we all know why none did, just as none of you would in all reality: fear, and who would actually listen without proof?
See the #MeToo movement, how that backfired for so many women, let alone trying to take down one of the richest people of all time. Also for those who paid attention, Melinda had long heavily hinted at this shit.
I think most people's issue is that all she's ever done is hint, and now that there is less reason than ever to hint, that's all she continues to do.
This case needs someone to step up, corroborate the documents, and speak out so some of these things can be unredacted. She, as a billionaire, is best equipped, but chose to keep hinting on a podcast tour instead, and in the current climate, that makes people suspicious.
I am just speculating here, like everyone else is, but she is probably just hinting because she doesn't know shit.
"My ex-husband, billionaire tech mogul Bill Gates, used to hang out with Jeff Epstein. Bill would occasionally meet up with him" is the extent should could say and prove. The rest is hearsay.
That's a bad argument, lots of people end up dead
Yup. If she would have went to the press without evidence, she would not have been believed. Still today people here are very quick to call someone a conspiracy theorist, including probably most of the people in this thread. They would have been attacking her. Not a single doubt in my mind about that.
So at the same time as people say someone should speak up, they keep attacking people who does, unless their sources are accepted as evidence by official media sources.
I dont blame her for being quiet, not at all.
Not just not believed, but she could have easily been hit with a libel/slander suit if there wasn't any evidence.
It's why nothing will ever change. People don't care more than getting some potshots. It's why the population is so easy to distract.
How did she benefit, apart from what I thought people around these parts would've been gleeful to hear that she "took from the rich," and gave much of that money away?
It was a failed marriage; the more she learned, the more she was disgusted. She took the money and left. We don't even fucking know if she isn't partly a victim herself. Nevertheless she's speaking up now, which she in no way had to.
Yet some here would paint her as Ghislaine Maxwell herself, what the fuck?
We don't even fucking know if she isn't partly a victim herself.
One email has Gates soliciting advice and help for dosing his wife's food or drink with antibiotics, since he had an STD that he picked up from some of Epstein's "Russian girls," which Epstein seems willing to do.
So, yeah, she's a victim.
She's not as bad, but she definitely isn't a good person worth defend.
Based on what?
She is not a victim. I wouldn't care about her at all outside of "tax her so she's not a billionaire," except this publicity does nothing for anyone but her. Chances are she's paying big bucks to do these interviews. I mean it's the same move her ex has pulled the last 20 years!
Maybe she was ignorant and had no access to proof. Or maybe she's into the same shit and wants a squeaky clean reputation to help avoid consequences. Either way, these types of articles shouldn't be trusted, and they certainly shouldn't be on the front page.
she probably was an enabler, doesnt want to lose that sweet charity image you made.
And yet...she still uses Gates in her name.
Still victim blaming. How do you decide what someone else chooses to be called? 27 years is a long time, and there are a lot of good reasons to hold onto a name even after the person you shared it with turns out to be bad for you. Does everyone who estranges from their father need to change their last name if that's who they got it from?
I mean, I wouldn't wanna be called ms pedo
Yes, there are good reasons here, namely political and power influence.
Funny how this is the victim, not the children on the Island .
I never said there was only one victim, friend. Many people may be hurt by a single action, of course to varying degrees.
Forget Melinda Gates. I was subjected to 2 minutes of her garbage NPR interview yesterday before I was able to skip it; it's fucking crazy that this woman is being allowed to do a goddamn press tour about this, like she's the main character. Oh, are you sad that Bill was a total piece of shit and you did nothing? Go be sad on your own time, on the miniscule chance you're somehow not a total psycho you can go find a therapist, I'm sure you can afford one. Stop hogging media time to wash your own bullshit image. I wonder how much she donated to get them to have her on.
Literally, get a bar of gold, melt it down, press it into gold foil tissues, carve another gold bar into a tissue box, and wipe her tears. She could spend $100,000 on doing that every day for the next 800 years before running out of money.
Like if she had something genuine to add, that'd be something. You know, corroborate a victim's story, make a call to action, "he should be in prison," even "here's something I'm doing to help" would still be reputation laundering but it would be something. She literally just went on to say (probably lie) that she didn't know about it and it makes her so sad. Fucking billionaires, fuck.
Also, even ignoring the Epstein stuff, she stuck with Gates while he was doing a lot of really unethical things at Microsoft. She either liked him, or liked his billions enough to stick with him for a long time. She doesn't get a pass because she started spending the billions she got from him in the divorce for charity. Where did those billions come from? She was standing by his side as he raked them in by illegally using his monopoly to crush competitors to Microsoft and threaten Linux / Linux users with patent infringement, lawsuits, etc.
Billionaires can afford 2 minute advatorials.
Oh look, another rich asshole who knew what was happening but didn't tell us.
Fuck these people and fuck their families. We should be taking their wealth by force.
We should be taking their wealth back by force
FTFY ;)
So she is very much suggesting here that he did go to pedo island and that he did have sex there...
Not that it surprises me, but... I've hated Microsoft since it's founding, it's been one evil fucking company, but Bill Gates going down as a pedophile isn't on my 2026 bingo card.
Edit: Do we have any more sources on this? I somehow find it hard to believe
Yes, but he donated a fraction of his fortune to a set of charities chosen to maximize their PR value! That totally absolves him!
Not even purely for PR value. One of his foundation's causes is providing free medicines to third-world countries -- to stave off their saying "fuck patents" and producing the drugs for themselves, thereby helping to erode intellectual property rights.
Fun fact this has always confused me because I would think the best way to maximize PR value would be to just set up a metric fucktonne of charities basically everywhere with a wide breadth of functions. The whole hyper specific charity thing just comes across as weird at best intentionally manipulative at worst, which I guess is the point but it should be harder to tell at first glance y'know?
As I understand Bill Gates is a member of the effective altruism movement, which is a movement that argues that we should support the most effective charities that are actually proven to do good by measurable metrics, not just assumed to do good. The idea is to study different interventions and see how effective and how expensive they are (e.g. let's say we want to pay for textbooks for kids in Sierra Leone to help them complete school. Sure, seems like a good idea. But does that actually result in a greater percentage of students completing school? or is the reason they don't finish school mainly because they can't get enough to eat and they're suffering from tuberculosis, in which case the money would be better spent on tuberculosis treatment and food or just giving money directly to the families?). As a baseline, it compares how effective it is to just give money directly to the world's poorest people. And it only supports charities that are more effective than that, per dollar. This ends up supporting a few niche charities because if charity A proves they can save a life for $100 and charity B proves they can save a life for $200, you may as well dump as much money into charity A as they can handle, and only give money to charity B if charity A runs out of capacity/ability to save lives at that price.
Or she was just talking in general terms that he has some … issues.
I would hate to find out that she knew he was a pedo.
I don't think she is suggesting that. The emails don't say anything about him going to the island. They were emails Epstein sent to himself and one of them which he signed "Boris" says he was asked to do inappropriate things "from helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trusts, with married women". Bill Gates was alleged to have had an affair with Russian bridge player "Mila Antonova" in 2010 so likely the email is referring to that, and Melinda Gates is referring to the painful time when her husband had an affair.
There is a lot that's been going on with these files, but the island wasn't only underage girls right? It was underage and just legal types?
So it's possible Bill never partook in the underage stuff, still got the STD, but is still a scumbag since just being involved with it all means he knew what was going on even if he didnt put his dick in it.
So he either is a pedo, or knowingly supported a large group of them.
I remember several years ago some incredibly cringey puff piece video came out about Gates. He must have financed it, in fact. It was aimed at 'humanizing' him, and painting him as a genius polymath philanthropist. My family was mad at me for calling out the blatant bullshit. I'm glad everyone is finally getting to see that there are no good billionaires.
He has been doing the reinvention of his image since 2000s, i knew it was bs, because his charitables were laudering money, and reddit was helping him by giving him AMA now and then. he was criticized over his vaccine push into african countries oto.
ironic that cosby a sexual predator himself. gates likely knew too, and probably thought if cosby can look "homely and humble" despite him being a SP.
kinda saw right through him when he was donating, or having some kind of philantrophy mission in AFRICA, it seems like its a fetish amongst the rich billionaires using africa as a way to "hey look here we are helping these poor people that are poorer than you are". he also did ama on reddit a while back, they dint allow any "discourse" of potential money laundering being discussed.
I don't think it's possible.
I don't think it's worth the risk.
Probably because if she admits to how much she knew, we'd know she could have done something to stop it.
All I’m hearing is “she fucking knew what was going on and didn’t say shit”. IANAL, but does that equal an accessory or obstruction charge or what?
Bill probably had her tied up in court to say nothing or else she wouldnt get this or that(money) from his marriage.
Imagine being the lawyer who delivered that ultimatum to her.
Also, isn’t active concealment of a crime grounds for disbarment?
Also also, if “not getting a good settlement” is really what deterred her, she’s just as guilty in my eyes. I’d think “wow so my husband is an enthusiastic pedophile” is grounds for just getting the fuck out of the marriage by any means possible while signing as little as possible, going to the Feds, and then simultaneously opening a massive civil lawsuit against him for psychological damage and abuse because he’s a fucking pedophile.
Her tacitly helping to conceal this shit makes her an accessory to systematic pedophilic sexual abuse, at the very least, in my eyes.
There are no crimes being alleged here, just an affair with an adult woman, which isn't illegal, so nothing you could charge Bill with, nevermind Melinda. From Forbes: "No documents allege Gates was involved with wrongdoing in connection with Epstein or had knowledge of the financier’s alleged sex trafficking".
The only thing it does contain that could be criminal is an allegation that Bill requested antibiotics to give to Melinda to treat an STD without her knowledge. But this is just an allegation in an email that Epstein wrote to himself, for some reason, after Gates had cut contact with him, seemingly from the perspective of "Boris". Presumably Gates' advisor Boris Nikolic.
The email is both to and from Epstein, but says in one part that if he and Gates were to trade places he would have said "Boris, this is not your fault" and given him a house and 5 years' pay. Then it says "...what I did receive however was an unfriendly strongly worded email, telling me how employable I am and that I should not look to you for any significant financial help in the future, TO add insult to the injury you them implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis." (No such emails from Gates are in the Epstein files). Then a third email also to himself saying he was quitting. (Nikolic appears to have continued to work with Gates for years after that.) Honestly it doesn't seem very credible to me that Nikolic, a Harvard trained science advisor for Gates, would have asked Jeffery Epstein to write such an email to Gates on his behalf. Kinda seems like weird shit Epstein made up because he was angry about being dumped by Gates who he had been angling to get a bunch of money from as part of a philanthropy deal (Epstein promised Gates he could get a bunch of funds donated for his foundation, but said he wanted a kickback out of any funding he secured.)
Deny, deflect, distract, repeat
@lemmy.world
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
go to feed...
Ok but if she knew about it and it's why the divorce why didn't she say shit, unless I'm missing something?
save