Bill Gates sat in a closed room on Capitol Hill for nearly six hours on June 10 and answered questions about the one relationship he keeps calling the biggest mistake of his life. On June 23, the House Oversight Committee dumped the whole thing out for the public, all 138 pages of it. The takeaway is hard to misread: Gates told lawmakers he believes Jeffrey Epstein was working out, step by step, how to blackmail him.
This wasn’t a tabloid rumor or an anonymous tip. This was the Microsoft co-founder, under questioning from members of Congress, walking them through emails Epstein wrote and what he thinks the man was trying to do with them. Here’s what came out, and why people who have followed the Epstein files for years are paying close attention.
Gates Says Epstein Was “Rehearsing” How to Blackmail Him
Gates told the panel he learned Epstein had gotten hold of sensitive details about his personal life, including the fact that he had been unfaithful in his marriage. According to Gates, Epstein then tried to use that information, plus a pile of lies stacked on top of it, to pressure Gates back into his orbit after Gates had pulled away.
“He never blackmailed me, but looking at these emails, it raises a serious probability that he contemplated blackmailing me,” Gates told the committee. He pointed to draft emails Epstein wrote to himself in 2013, calling them a kind of brainstorming session. “In many cases he, at least in emails to himself, was sort of rehearsing how either he or coaching someone else might choose to blackmail me,” Gates said. None of those messages were ever actually sent to him.
The way Gates described it, Epstein liked to mix a little truth with a lot of fiction. Some of what was in those drafts was real. The rest, in Gates’s words, was “literally dozens of false things.”
The Russian Women Gates Named Under Oath
One of the strangest parts of the testimony is how specific Gates got. He acknowledged affairs with two Russian women: Mila Antonova, a bridge player he met at card events, and Karima Nigmatulina, a nuclear physicist. He also acknowledged an earlier affair with medical entrepreneur Dr. Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt. That’s at least three relationships outside his marriage, laid out for a congressional record.
Here’s the part that matters: Gates says Epstein didn’t introduce him to either Russian woman. Epstein found out about the affairs after the fact and then tried to turn that knowledge into a weapon. The draft emails hinted at the relationships and falsely claimed Gates had picked up a sexually transmitted infection, which Gates flatly denied.
Gates also told the panel that his ex-wife Melinda knew about the two affairs with the Russian women back in 2013. So the leverage Epstein supposedly thought he had wasn’t quite the secret he believed it to be.
How One of the Richest Men Alive Ended Up at Epstein’s Table
So how did this even start? Gates says he first met Epstein in 2011, introduced by one of his most trusted employees, science adviser Dr. Boris Nikolic. The pitch was that Epstein had deep connections to the ultra-wealthy and could steer big donors toward the Gates Foundation’s global health work.
Gates already knew Epstein had a conviction “of a sexual nature.” He kept meeting with him anyway, he told lawmakers, because he thought the money would follow. It never did. Epstein claimed he advised “lots of billionaires” on Wall Street and in the Middle East, but Gates said the promised donor connections led nowhere. He described Epstein as a “dilettante” with only surface-level knowledge of science.
The Nikolic thread runs through the whole story. Gates believes Nikolic is how Epstein learned about two of the affairs in the first place. There was even a moment in London where Gates says he asked Nikolic to act as a cover, telling Epstein he was meeting with him so Gates could slip away. Nikolic was later named an executor in Epstein’s will, which Gates said surprised him “a lot.” Still, Gates rejected the idea that Nikolic masterminded anything. “I think, at some point, Boris realized that introducing Epstein was a mistake,” he said.
The Dinners, the Magician, and a Treasury Secretary
The transcript gives a peek into what these meetings actually looked like, and the guest lists are something. Gates said he and Epstein met 12 to 14 times in person plus two Skype calls over four years. Some of those were dinners with academics and bankers.
One dinner, Gates told the committee, included former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former Barclays CEO Jes Staley. Another featured a performance by magician David Blaine. Picture that crowd in a room together and you get a sense of how Epstein sold himself, surrounding people with names and faces that made the whole thing feel respectable.
Epstein kept pushing for more. Gates says he was repeatedly invited to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean and to an erotic show in Paris, the Crazy Horse, with that invitation passed along through Nikolic. Gates says he turned both down. He also told lawmakers that on several occasions Epstein asked to be photographed with women at the end of meetings, women Gates assumed were administrative assistants.
“A Grave Error in Judgment” and What Gates Denies
Gates has not been accused of any crime connected to Epstein, and he hammered that point hard. He told the panel his relationship was strictly professional, that he never witnessed or took part in any sexual misconduct, and that he never even discussed sex with Epstein. He called the whole association a “grave error in judgment” that “led to nothing” for fundraising and only put his foundation’s reputation at risk.
But Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia pushed on a tough point. The committee’s own investigation found that some of Epstein’s own employees were abused. So Gates couldn’t completely rule out that he was ever in the same room as a victim. Gates conceded he may have been in their presence, even if he says he never knowingly interacted with anyone who was victimized.
Gates said he only learned the full scope of Epstein’s crimes in 2018, when the Miami Herald published its reporting. That, he said, was when he realized Epstein had registered as a sex offender. He cut contact in December 2014, once he was convinced Epstein would never come through on the donor promises.
The Email Asking for “Reimbursement”
After the two men split, Gates says Epstein still tried to squeeze him. In one instance, Epstein emailed asking for “reimbursement” tied to one of the women Gates had been involved with. Reporting from 2023 connected this to a software-coding course Epstein had funded for Mila Antonova, with Epstein later seeking his money back in a message that read like a quiet threat.
Gates’s answer was short. “I communicated to my key person, top person at Gates Ventures, Larry Cohen, that we were never going to pay anything,” he testified. No money changed hands.
One detail Gates kept circling back to: how rich Epstein actually was. He said he finds it “confusing” how Epstein piled up his money, and noted that Epstein’s New York City apartment was one of the most spacious homes he had ever seen in Manhattan.
Where the Investigation Goes From Here
Gates wasn’t the only transcript released that day. The committee also put out the deposition of Lesley Groff, a longtime Epstein assistant who arranged massages with young women for him. According to lawmakers who listened, Groff began working for Epstein around the time he pleaded guilty to state sex offense charges in Florida. One representative said flatly that he questioned whether she could honestly claim she “saw nothing improper” in arranging young women for a registered sex offender.
Committee chairman James Comer formally asked Gates to come in after Gates kept turning up in documents the Justice Department released under the Epstein Transparency Act, the 2025 law that forced millions of files into public view. The panel isn’t done. It’s set to interview billionaire Leon Black, former Clinton aide Doug Band, and Jes Staley over the summer.
For all the hours of testimony, including from a former president, congressional observers point out that lawmakers still have little to show in terms of criminal charges or a clean admission of where the government dropped the ball. Gates, for his part, says he supports releasing every file. “I hope my participation contributes to getting justice for the victims,” he said in a statement after his interview. He denied ever victimizing anyone, called the affairs real and the rest of Epstein’s claims invented, and left the room insisting the blackmail he describes was something Epstein planned but never pulled off.