Melinda Gates on Epstein Files: ‘I Am So Happy to Be Away from All the Muck’
“Whatever questions remain there for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me,” she told NPR's Wild Card.
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Since the Justice Department released its final heap of Epstein files on Friday, many of the powerful men named in the more-than-three-million pages have been scrambling to distance themselves from the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
One file includes an apparent 2013 email exchange between Epstein and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. In it, Gates appears to ask for help getting medicine for an STI that he allegedly contracted from “Russian girls,” so that he can hide it from his then-wife, Melinda French Gates. “It is not on you to respond to the details of that alleged behavior,” NPR’s Rachel Martin asked Melinda in an interview on Wild Card on Tuesday. “But I wonder what your dominant emotion is when you read these news articles with these details.”
“Sad. Just unbelievable sadness,” she said. “I’m able to take my own sadness and say, ‘My god, how did they—how did that happen to those girls?’” She added that she feels sadness for having to leave her marriage, even though she wanted to, and sadness for leaving the foundation.
Melinda and Bill were married for 27 years before they divorced in 2021, and she stepped down from her position as co-chair at the Gates Foundation in 2024. She’s previously spoken candidly about the “betrayals” in her marriage. A spokesperson for Gates previously denied the references, saying they are “absolutely absurd and completely false.”
“No girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No girl,” she said. “I mean, it’s just—it’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages.”
MELINDA GATES: “It brings back memories of some very painful times in my marriage — They need to answer to those things, not me.”
She implies she left her marriage and the Gates Foundation for reasons related to Bill’s ties to Epstein.
(H/T shadowofezra)
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) February 3, 2026 at 2:32 PM
“I have moved on from that,” Melinda said of the most recent Epstein Files dump. “I purposely pushed it away, and I moved on.”
“Whatever questions remain there for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me,” she added. “And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”
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