WASHINGTON, United States — Bill Gates told congressional investigators that Jeffrey Epstein tried to use knowledge of his extramarital affairs to pressure him after their relationship ended.
The account appears in a transcript of Gates’s closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee released Tuesday, June 23, 2026.
Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, said Epstein later sent an email seeking “reimbursement” for expenses connected to a woman with whom Gates had an affair. Gates testified that he refused to pay.
“I communicated to my key person, top person at Gates Ventures, Larry Cohen, that we were never going to pay anything,” Gates told investigators.
Gates said he was introduced to Epstein in 2011 by Dr. Boris Nikolic, one of his most trusted employees. He told the committee that he believed Nikolic had informed Epstein about two of his extramarital affairs.
The testimony offered new detail about Gates’s account of his relationship with Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in 2019, and about how Gates said Epstein sought to exploit information about his private life.
Questions Over Epstein’s Knowledge
Investigators asked Gates whether there had been other affairs, saying the question was relevant to whether he had additional links to Epstein.
Gates and his lawyers pushed back against that line of questioning.
Gates pointed to draft emails that Epstein appeared to have written to himself in 2013, which contained unverified allegations about Gates.
Gates said the drafts showed that Epstein had gathered damaging material, including some claims Gates said were false.
“I think that Epstein, when he was writing emails to himself, took every potential negative thing he knew, and some that are completely false, and he put those into draft emails to himself,” Gates said.
“And so I think if in some weird way he discovered anything negative to say about me, we would have seen that in the emails that he sent to himself.”
Gates denied having had a sexually transmitted disease, though he said “it’s possible” he told Nikolic he was concerned that he might have had one.
A Relationship Gates Says Was Professional
Gates told investigators that his relationship with Epstein lasted about three years and was professional.
He said he knew when he met Epstein that Epstein had a “criminal conviction” that was “of a sexual nature,” but said Epstein had claimed he could help raise billions of dollars for global health work.
That philanthropic effort did not materialise, according to Gates’s testimony.
“I have regret that I didn’t factor that in to a greater degree,” Gates testified, referring to Epstein’s criminal history and reputation.
Gates said Epstein invited him to his island and to social events, but that he avoided those settings because of Epstein’s conviction.
He also described Epstein’s New York City apartment as one of the most “spacious” homes in Manhattan he had seen and said he found it “confusing” how Epstein had accumulated his wealth.
Gates also told investigators that he had voluntarily cooperated with the attorney general of the United States Virgin Islands by sitting for an interview and providing some financial records.
He did not say when that cooperation took place.
Gates Says He May Have Been Near Victims
Gates testified that he did not witness or participate in sexual misconduct and said he did not interact with Epstein’s victims. But he acknowledged that he may have been near some of them.
Representative Robert Garcia, Democrat of California, asked Gates whether he could be certain he had never been around any victims, given the committee’s finding that some of Epstein’s employees were also abused by him.
“That’s a very good point,” Gates said, according to the transcript.
Gates said he had seen some female employees of Epstein’s at the end of a meeting on one of Epstein’s planes.
“I may have been in the presence of victims,” he said.
The committee sought Gates’s testimony after the Justice Department released additional Epstein files this year, renewing scrutiny of Gates’s ties to Epstein.
Former Assistant’s Testimony
The committee also released a transcript of testimony from Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime assistant, who described Epstein as a “master manipulator” and said she did not know about his crimes.
Groff said she connected Epstein and Donald Trump, then a private citizen, by phone several times over 10 years, but said she did not know what they discussed.
Trump has long denied wrongdoing related to Epstein and has denied allegations of sexual misconduct.
Groff said she believed the people she scheduled for Epstein’s massages were massage therapists and described the arrangement as an “independent contractor type of situation.”
She said she stopped regularly arranging those appointments in 2008, when Epstein served about a year in jail in Florida.
Democrats on the committee challenged that account by pointing to appointments after 2008 that Groff had booked for Epstein.
“I would not have known that this was a massage,” Groff told lawmakers.
“I don’t know — you’re assuming that I would think it was a massage, but I did not think of it as a massage.”
