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Time for a reckoning: Bill Gates’ ex-wife responds to bombshell allegation against him in Epstein files

February 4, 2026 | | Print Article

Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, responded on Tuesday to the latest allegations against her former husband.

New Epstein documents released by the Trump Department of Justice late last week contained bombshell allegations against him.

The files specifically contained emails from deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in which he claimed that Gates had engaged in extramarital “sex with Russian girls” during a visit to Epstein’s private island.

Epstein also alleged that Gates had “begged” him for antibiotics that could be “surreptitiously” given to his then-wife, Melinda, out of fear that he’d accidentally passed an STD to her.

Gates has since denied these claims.

“These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false,” his spokesperson told Fox News. “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

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Melinda, meanwhile, appears to have swallowed the claims whole.

Appearing on NPR’s “Wild Card” podcast on Tuesday, she was asked about the claims, and the response was not good for her former husband.

“Well, let me say this, I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right?” she began. “No girl, 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, I mean, it’s just it’s beyond heartbreaking, right?”

“I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages, right? So, um, for me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because, um, brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” she added.

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Continuing her remarks, she basically said the allegations are for her ex-husband to deal with, not her.

“I have moved on from that,” she stressed. “I purposely pushed it away, and I moved on. I’m in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life. So whatever questions remain there of what I don’t — can’t even begin to know all of it. Those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need the answer to those things, not me! Well, and I am so happy to be away from all the muck.”

Melinda was later asked how she feels hearing about Epstein and his exploits in the news.

“Sad, just unbelievable sadness,” she said. “Unbelievable sadness. Again, I’m able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, ‘My God, how did they — how did that happen to those girls?’ And so for me, it’s just sadness. I left my marriage. I had to leave my marriage. I wanted to leave my marriage.”

“I had to leave the — I felt I needed to eventually leave the foundation. So, it’s just sad. That’s the truth, right? And it’s kind of like, at least for me, I’ve been able to move on in life. And I hope there’s some justice for those now-women, right? We see them standing up in front of microphones in D.C. Um, what they went through is just unimaginable,”  she added.

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Melinda and her ex-husband officially split up in 2021 after 27 years of marriage. It was learned afterward that her husband had an affair with a Microsoft employee, among others.

In her 2025 book, “The Next Day,” she made reference to “betrayals” in her marriage.

According to People magazine, she specifically wrote that therapy “made it possible for me to respond to the betrayals in my marriage without betraying myself in return.”

Vivek Saxena
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