Bill Gates has revealed the names of three women he had extramarital affairs with during his marriage to Melinda French, during closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee about his former ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
In a transcript of an interview conducted without legal obligation, which was released on June 23, the Microsoft co-founder claimed that Epstein knew about his infidelities and tried to "pressure" him to "reconnect" while "considering" blackmail.
Gates, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has denied any “illegal” actions, spoke to the committee as part of an ongoing investigation into the release of the Epstein files by the Justice Department. During the interview, which took place on Capitol Hill on June 10, the businessman stressed that his three-year relationship with Epstein from 2011 to 2014 was purely professional. However, Gates claimed that Epstein tried to contact him when he learned of his infidelity.
"I later learned that Epstein had obtained information about my personal life, including the fact that I had been unfaithful in my marriage. These relationships had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein, but they were painful for my family," Gates said during the interview.
Gates, who finalized his divorce from French in 2021 after 27 years of marriage, named bridge player Mila Antonova and nuclear scientist Karima Nigmatulina as two of the women he had extramarital affairs with. He also later identified Dr. Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt, whom he had met at a conference before 2010, after the committee discovered her redacted name was in the Epstein files.
Gates stated that he believes the employee who introduced him to Epstein was the one who told him about his extramarital affairs, saying:
“Epstein was trying to use the information about my infidelities, in addition to the many lies he added to them, to pressure me into reconnecting with him. He was unsuccessful in this effort, but it shows some of the ways he tried to exploit my interactions with me to further his agenda. I should never have met Epstein.”
The 70-year-old explained:
“There was never a direct threat of ‘if you don’t do something, I’ll reveal this.’ There was implicit language of ‘we should all be friends.’ And as I said, I took it very seriously and said, ‘If you think you’re going to get more money out of this, it’s not going to happen, and if it means you’re going to talk to people about this, I’m just going to deal with it and figure it out myself.’”
Gates later added, "He never blackmailed me, but looking at these emails, it raises a serious possibility that he intended to blackmail me."
