The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released the transcript of its interview with tech billionaire Bill Gates as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

Gates appeared before the committee for a nearly six-hour interview on June 10 to answer questions about his past involvement with Epstein. The Microsoft co-founder was one of the prominent figures whom Epstein sought out, and he made several appearances in the Justice Department’s Epstein files. Gates is not accused of wrongdoing.

According to the 138-page transcript, Gates explained how and why he came to meet Epstein and the people in his orbit with whom Epstein was connected. He also spoke about his eventual decision to cut ties with Epstein and the financier’s subsequent attempts to “reengage” him.

Here are nine details from Gates’ interview that shed light on his relationship with Epstein. Scroll to the bottom to read the full transcript.

Gates said he met with Epstein to fundraise for his foundation

Gates said he met Epstein in 2011 through “people I trusted in my professional and philanthropic work.” He believed that the financier, who portrayed himself as well-connected, could help raise billions of dollars for the Gates Foundation, he said.

Although Epstein “did many things to try and deepen the relationship” between them, Gates said he turned down opportunities to socialize with Epstein, including invites to his island in the Caribbean.

Gates said Epstein “certainly wasn’t a friend.” They had several dinners together over the years, one of which was with former Barclays CEO Jes Staley and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Magician David Blaine came in to perform at one of the dinners, Gates said.

Gates and Epstein maintained a relationship until 2014, when the billionaire realized “Epstein would never deliver on his promises” to connect him with donors, Gates told the committee. They met 12-14 times in total, including two Skype calls, in those four years, Gates said.

Gates said it was a ‘mistake’ to involve himself with Epstein

Gates characterized his meeting with Epstein as a “grave error in judgment.”

He said his involvement with Epstein ultimately “led to nothing” as far as fundraising for his foundation, and in fact risked harming his reputation and that of his organization.

“It was a mistake because of his prior conviction. It’s even more of a mistake when I read, in 2018, that basically he had not served an appropriate penalty for the things he had done, and then even more so, as I read that, even after 2009, perhaps even during the time 2011 to 2014, when I was meeting with him, that there were ongoing crimes, Gates said.

“I was so focused on the possibility of raising funds for global health that I allowed that goal to override my better judgment,” Gates told lawmakers.

Gates said he never witnessed criminal activity on Epstein’s part or participated in any such behavior

Gates told lawmakers that he never witnessed Epstein engage in sexual contact and never discussed sex with him.

He said he had been in rooms or settings where women who appeared to be Epstein’s administrative assistants were present, but they never attended any meetings he was in. On several occasions, Gates said, Epstein would ask him to be photographed with those assistants at the end of the meeting.

“I believe they did not look to be underage,” Gates said about those women.

Gates said he didn’t know that many of the women who presented as Epstein’s assistants were abused

Gates said he was not aware that some of the women he briefly encountered around Epstein were victimized by the financier.

“I never spent time with any women who I was aware were victims, and so that’s why I’ve enumerated very carefully when I ever saw any of those admin assistants, because, tragically, as you say, it appears in the press now that some of those women were indeed victims,” Gates told the committee.

Gates said he regrets not factoring Epstein’s conviction into his judgment of him

Gates said he knew that Epstein had been convicted of a crime “of a sexual nature” before they met, and he was aware of Epstein’s “bad reputation stemming from his criminal conviction” during the time that they knew each other.

Epstein’s conviction was a concern to him, Gates said, and part of the reason he eventually ended relations with Epstein. “But I have regret that I didn’t factor that into a greater degree,” he said.

Gates said he only found out later that Epstein was a registered sex offender

Although he knew about Epstein’s conviction, Gates said he only discovered that the financier was a registered sex offender in 2018 “when a Miami newspaper described the sort of extensive and horrific details of what he had done before his 2008, 2009 conviction that I became aware of the extent of his crimes, and I believe that’s when I first knew that he’d actually registered as a sex offender.”

Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown’s investigation into Epstein’s 2008 plea deal sparked immense public interest and led to his federal prosecution in 2019.

Gates said he only met Ghislaine Maxwell once

Gates told lawmakers that he met Epstein’s accomplice once in a hotel restaurant. Maxwell was with her then-boyfriend, a tech billionaire named Ted Waitt, whom Gates knew.

They did not have a substantive conversation, Gates said, adding that he and Epstein never talked about Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking and other charges in 2021.

His then-wife, Melinda French Gates, had a ‘very negative impression’ of Epstein

Gates said his ex-wife, philanthropist Melinda French Gates, had a “very negative reaction” to Epstein when they met at a dinner in 2013.

French Gates urged her then-husband to hold Epstein to his promises to connect him with wealthy donors or sever ties with him.

“She definitely had a very negative impression of him,” he told lawmakers. “Her instinct about arrogant men — or I’m not sure what — but she certainly showed better judgment than I did.”

Gates said Epstein tried to use his extramarital affair ‘as a tactic to reengage with me’

Gates said he was not blackmailed by Epstein, but the emails in which Epstein laid out negative details about him — including about his extramarital affairs — as released by the Justice Department showed that Epstein’s “brainstorming was going in that direction.”

“These affairs had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein, but they were painful for my family. As the public can now see based on what has been released in the files, Epstein was working to use information about my infidelities, in addition to many lies that he layered on top, to pressure me to reengage with him,” Gates said. “He was unsuccessful in this effort, but it shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda.”

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