How Epstein wheedled his way into Bill Gates' world - and why Melinda hated it
There is a photograph of Bill Gates – easily searchable on the internet, unmissable as a billboard – in which the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist is standing facing the camera, his lips pressed into the service of a smile. There are four other men in the picture, taken in May 2011. Gates is second from right, dressed in a blue collared shirt and one of his usual sweaters. To his left stands a man with a buzz cut. To his right, at the centre of the photograph, is a man with a tousled mop of salt-and-pepper hair, his arms folded. He is dressed in blue jeans and a half-zip sweater, the left arm of which is emblazoned with the American flag. On his feet are velvet slippers.
This man is Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, social parasite, poseur and pariah who died by his own hand in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. A month earlier, federal authorities had charged Epstein with sex trafficking of girls as young as 14, and the world was learning of his lurid activities and the astonishing array of high-profile men in his network. Of all the stars that studded Epstein’s dark universe, from academics and entertainers to bankers and billionaires, Gates was the brightest. He was also the most mystifying. Here was one of the most recognised names and faces in the world, a visionary technologist who helped kickstart the computing revolution, and a path-blazing philanthropist with the lofty ambition of saving lives. Why was a deity of capitalism consorting with one of its Mephistophelian bottom-feeders?
There was no convenient label to affix to the relationship between Gates and Epstein, and no label would have hidden the smudges that began to blur the clear, unsullied outlines of the technology billionaire’s do-gooder image. The photograph, which surfaced in 2019, accompanied a story by The New York Times detailing multiple meetings between the two men. Two years later, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, Melinda Gates, his wife of 27 years, would divorce him. Theirs had sometimes been a difficult marriage; for years, talk of Gates’ womanising had whirred in the background among those who worked with the former couple. But the public airing of his relationship with Epstein contributed to their break-up. As if to symbolically distance herself from the man who had betrayed her, even though she was tied to him forever by their shared philanthropy, Melinda inserted her maiden name in between her first and last names. She would now go by Melinda French Gates.
Not long after their divorce, the world learnt about the affairs he had conducted during his marriage. Once a model of rectitude, Gates had fallen into a slurry of ignominy. The large tear in Gates’ public image has forced us to reassess the man we knew, or thought we knew, a man so brilliant, so rich and so munificent that he had for decades been feted and festooned like a king wherever he went.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/how-epstein-wheedled-his-way-into-bill-gates-world-and-why-melinda-hated-it-20240802-p5jywv.html
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PS, Isn't it lovely to see paragraphs of more than one short sentence, which seems to be the fashion these days.
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A pilot testified in court that several luminaries flew on Epstein's private plane, including Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew.
Source:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/30/us/ghislaine-maxwell-pilot/index.html