According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Epstein allegedly used Bill Gates’ extramarital affair with a Russian bridge player to threaten him. Gates had apparently met Mila Antonova in 2010 when she was in her 20s and he was in his mid-50s and married.
Epstein met Antonova in 2013 and funded her education in software coding.
“In 2017, Epstein emailed Gates and asked to be reimbursed for the cost of the course, according to the people familiar with the matter,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The email came after the convicted sex offender had struggled and failed to convince Gates to participate in a multibillion-dollar charitable fund that Epstein tried to establish with JPMorgan Chase.”
According to the news outlet, Epstein allegedly threatened to disclose Gates’ relationship with Antonova if Gates didn’t maintain a connection with Epstein.
A spokesperson for Gates told the WSJ, “Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.”
Antonova refused to provide a comment regarding the Gates sex scandal but mentioned that she had no prior knowledge of who Jeffrey Epstein was when they first met.
“I had no idea that he was a criminal or had any ulterior motive,” the Russian bridge player said of Epstein. “I just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help. I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did.”
It is rumored that Antonova had a meeting with Epstein in November 2013 at his townhouse to propose a project aimed at promoting the game of bridge. Although the venture was not supported by Epstein, he did pay for her education.
“Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school. Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that,” Antonova said. “When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
Antonova mentioned in a YouTube video from 2010 that she had met Gates and played bridge with him. It has been reported that Gates had numerous meetings with Epstein, which started in 2011.
The New York Times reported in 2019:
In fact, beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times. Employees of Mr. Gates’s foundation also paid multiple visits to Mr. Epstein’s mansion. And Mr. Epstein spoke with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase about a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund — an arrangement that had the potential to generate enormous fees for Mr. Epstein.
In March 2013, Gates flew on Epstein’s Gulfstream plane from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida, according to flight records.
According to a prior article from the Daily Beast, Gates and his wife had a meeting with Epstein in 2013 during a trip to New York City. Melinda Gates apparently felt uneasy about the meeting with the convicted child abuser and was angry about her husband’s association with Epstein.
“Gates’ friendship with Epstein — who for years was accused of molesting scores of underage girls — still haunts Melinda,” the Daily Beast reported, citing friends of the couple.
Melinda Gates told “CBS Mornings” last year, “I did not like that [Bill] had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. I made that clear to him. I also met Jeffrey Epstein exactly one time. I wanted to see who this man was, and I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door.”
Melinda called Epstein “abhorrent, evil personified.”
She added, “I had nightmares about it afterwards. That’s why my heart breaks for these young women. That’s how I felt, and I am an older woman. He was awful.”
There was an announcement in May 2021 that Melinda and Bill Gates, who had been married for 27 years, were getting divorced. In January 2023, Gates appeared to become frustrated when questioned about his connection to Epstein during an interview.
“I said that I’m— this is going way back in time, but yeah I will say for the over 100th time, yeah I shouldn’t have had dinners with him,” Gates said.
During an interview, Gates denied any association with Epstein beyond having dinner with him after the interviewer mentioned Epstein’s reputation for sexually compromising people. Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008 and died in a prison while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges in 2019. The Wall Street Journal had reported that Epstein met with various people, including a CIA director, Noam Chomsky, Obama’s White House counsel, and a Rothschild.
Leave a Comment