Co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates speaks during an event to mark the 20th anniversary of PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) at the United States Institute of Peace on February 24, 2023 in Washington, DC.(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:50 PM – Monday, May 22, 2023
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, the now-deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appeared to be blackmailing Bill Gates and had attempted to take down the multi-billionaire over his extramarital relationship with a Russian bridge player, unless he agreed to his demands.
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Gates reportedly first met the Russian woman, Mila Antonova, in 2010 when she was in her 20s. The bridge player and Epstein, a notable financier and sex trafficker, allegedly became friends in 2013, and he also paid for her to take software coding classes.
According to insiders familiar with the situation, Epstein sent Gates an email in 2017 requesting reimbursement for the cost of the course, according to the Journal, which published its investigation on Sunday.
Epstein had allegedly sent the email after trying to persuade Gates to take part in a massive charity fund that he was trying to launch at JPMorgan Chase. The Journal reported that Epstein’s email was sent to warn Gates that if he were to stop associating with him and his business ventures, then he would divulge his secret affair with the Russian bridge player.
However, a spokesperson for Gates told the WSJ that Epstein “tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.” The representative did not immediately reply to any other requests for comment.
According to a 2019 story by The New York Times, Gates started associating with Epstein in 2011, when the billionaire had already been found guilty of sexual offenses and was registered as a sex offender. In accordance with the mission of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which they claim is “to provide access to healthcare worldwide,” Gates previously stated that the meeting with Epstein was supposedly intended to raise money for global health.
Gates acknowledged back in January that he now regrets his continuous contact with Epstein in light of the revelations. However, his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, asserted that her husband had ignored or not responded to her demands to stop interacting with the nefarious financier.
“You’re going way back in time,” Bill Gates told Australia’s ABC 7.30 show. “I will say for the over 100th time, yeah, I shouldn’t have had dinners with him.”
Mila Antonova told the WSJ that she was completely oblivious to Epstein’s tarnished past when Gates’ confidant Boris Nikolic introduced them. Epstein had turned down Antonova’s plea for financial support in her plans to teach bridge online, however, he did agree to pay for her tuition at a programming boot camp.
“Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school,” Antonova told the press. “Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that. When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
Epstein was charged with sexually abusing young children in 2006, and he was also found guilty of soliciting and obtaining a minor for prostitution two years later. The financier served time in a Florida jail after registering as a sex offender.
In 2019, Epstein was detained once more on suspicion of human sex trafficking after a shocking Miami Herald article exposed dozens more victims of his operational abuse network. Later that year, while he had been awaiting trial, Epstein was discovered dead in his New York prison cell.
The medical examiner’s office in New York concluded that he had committed suicide. However, the surveillance footage of Epstein’s jail cell was allegedly “erased” due to “technical errors,” and the footage of his alleged suicide never came out publicly, leading to much speculation and curiosity surrounding what truly happened to him and who was actually responsible for his death.
Epstein had been reportedly providing underage victims to some of the most powerful individuals in the world, including Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The prince was pictured with a woman named Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s who was underage at the time.
Giuffre reportedly received a hefty payment from Prince Andrew in the amount of 12 million euros, or $16.6 million, using funds from the Queen’s private estate. He is now regarded as a disgraced member of the royal family, but aside from that, it does not appear that he will serve any jail time or endure any other punishment for his previous actions.
Other well-known figures whose names have been connected to the disgraced tycoon, besides Bill Gates, includes Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, John Glenn, and Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz, however, maintains that during his travels on Epstein’s private plane, the “Lolita Express,” he never witnessed any sexual impropriety and never encountered any minors without their parents.
“There have been suggestions that Epstein made secret videos of all the men who had sex in his houses and planes… I hope he did and they are all revealed, because they will prove I am not among them. I hereby waive any right of privacy in Epstein videos,” Dershowitz declared.
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