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‘He Was Evil Personified’: Melinda Says Bill Gates Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein Played Role In Divorce

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Melinda Gates, the ex-wife of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is telling her story and it does not paint a pretty picture of her ex-husband.

In a tell-all interview with CBS host Gayle King set to air Thursday the 57-year-old tells about infidelity and more, The Daily Beast reported.

But one thing that stuck out more than the others is the role that the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein played in her wanting a divorce.

“It was many things. But I did not like that he’d had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein,” she told  King. “I made that clear to him.”

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She said that she met Epstein “exactly one time, because I wanted to see who this man was. And I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door.

“He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. So my heart breaks for these young women.”

She went on to talk about her marriage to the billionaire.

“On the day I got married, I never thought I would end up being divorced,” she said to King.

Her husband had admitted to having one affair during their marriage, but she would not confirm there were any more, saying only “those are questions Bill needs to answer.”

“I thought we had worked through some of that,” she said. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy. And I couldn’t trust what we had.”

“I had a lot of tears for many days. I mean, days where I’m literally laying on the floor … thinking, ‘How can this be? How can I get up? How am I going to move forward?’” she said in a clip of the interview.

The host asked Gates about her husband having an affair with an employee when they were still married.

“I certainly believe in forgiveness,” she said. “So, I thought we had worked through some of that.”

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“It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened,” she said. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

Melinda Gates said she does not blame herself for the end of the marriage.

“I mean, this is painful stuff,” she said. “And at the end of the day though, I started on this journey of healing, and I feel like I’m starting to get to the other side. And I do feel like I’m turning a page in the chapter now. I mean, it’s 2022, and I’m actually really excited about what’s to come and life ahead for me.”

In October, The New York Times did a story on the questionable behavior of Gates is the workplace.

In 2006, for example, he attended a presentation by a female Microsoft employee. Mr. Gates, who at the time was the company’s chairman, left the meeting and immediately emailed the woman to ask her out to dinner, according to two people familiar with the exchange.

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“If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,” Mr. Gates wrote in an email, according to a person who read it to The New York Times.

The woman was indeed uncomfortable, the two people said. She decided to pretend it had never happened.

A year or two later, Mr. Gates was on a trip to New York on behalf of the Gates Foundation. He was traveling with a woman who worked for the foundation. Standing with her at a cocktail party, Mr. Gates lowered his voice and said: “I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?” according to the woman.

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