Updated

Updated · The Associated Press · Jul 21

Gates Foundation Held 30 Epstein Meetings Despite Staff Warnings, Tightens Vetting

Updated

Updated · The Associated Press · Jul 21

Gates Foundation Held 30 Epstein Meetings Despite Staff Warnings, Tightens Vetting

Q: Why did the Gates Foundation's review of Epstein ties exclude Bill Gates's own private office?

It was excluded because the review was deliberately scoped to examine only the Gates Foundation’s conduct, not Bill Gates’s personal affairs or the operations of his separate private office, Gates Ventures. The WilmerHale review was commissioned to assess whether the foundation itself had participated in, known about, or financially supported Jeffrey Epstein’s activities. Its executive summary explicitly said it did not cover Gates’s personal interactions, personal communications, or Gates Ventures, which is a separate personal service and investment entity rather than part of the foundation. The available reporting does not give a fuller explanation beyond that limited mandate. In other words, the exclusion appears to have been a boundary set by the foundation when it ordered the review, not a finding by investigators that the private office was irrelevant. WilmerHale also noted it did not have access to Gates’s personal communications, underscoring that the inquiry was not designed as a comprehensive examination of all Epstein-related contacts across Gates’s wider network. That narrow scope is significant because Gates Ventures and Gates’s personal office did have contact with Epstein, according to congressional testimony and other reporting. So the review answered a specific question about institutional knowledge and conduct at the foundation, but it did not resolve questions about Gates’s private office or his personal dealings.

3 articles · Updated · The Associated Press · Jul 21

A WilmerHale review found Bill Gates and foundation staff met Jeffrey Epstein about 30 times from 2011 to 2014, including visits to his Manhattan townhouse, even after employees raised reputational concerns.
Those contacts centered on a proposed public-health donor fund that never launched and on introductions that led to a 2013 polio-related grant to the International Peace Institute.
The foundation said the review found no evidence it paid Epstein or broke the law, though the five-month probe did not examine Gates' personal communications or his non-foundation dealings with Epstein.
Mark Suzman said the board has approved stronger vetting and risk-management measures after Gates, who has denied knowledge of Epstein's abuse, called the relationship a "grave error in judgment" last month.
The summary lands days after Warren Buffett dropped the Gates Foundation from his annual gifts, while saying the move reflected succession planning more than Gates' "distasteful" Epstein ties.