Billionaire Bill Gates said he shouldn’t have met with Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex trafficker who killed himself in prison on Aug. 10.
At The New York Times’s Dealbook conference on Nov. 6, Gates said he shouldn’t have met with Epstein, a financier who was allegedly a billionaire but had a net worth of about $560 million when he died.
“And I gave him some benefit by the association. So I made a doubly wrong mistake there.”
Gates also said it is “tricky” recruiting billionaires to sign his Giving Pledge, which encourages rich people to donate a portion of their wealth, because of the way some have made their fortunes.
“I feel bad: We probably will at some point accept someone into the Giving Pledge and it will turn out that their fortune is a disreputable fortune,” he said.
Gates has been defensive about his meetings with Epstein, which included flying with Epstein on his infamous plane in 2013.
At one meeting, Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin and her 15-year-old daughter were present. The meeting went for several hours and afterward, Gates emailed people telling them about it.
“A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late,” he wrote in some of the messages.
Gates said last month that he did meet Epstein.
“Every meeting where I was with him were meetings with men. I was never at any parties or anything like that. He never donated any money to anything that I know about.”