Newly Released Congressional Testimony Reveals How Jeffrey Epstein Weaponised Bill Gates’s Secret Affairs In A Calculated Campaign To Tighten His Grip On The Microsoft Co-Founder—And Exposes The Culture Of Impunity That Allowed The Predator To Move Among The Powerful.

For years, Bill Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was a gnawing enigma, a stain that the philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO tried to scrub with a mixture of contrition and deflection. Now, a 215-page transcript of Gates’s closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee, released on Tuesday, strips away the last layers of ambiguity. Under oath on June 10, 2026, Gates admitted to three extramarital affairs, named the women, and laid out, in granular, sometimes startling detail, how the convicted sex offender used that intimate knowledge as a weapon of psychological coercion, a “brainstorming” for blackmail that never quite materialised into a direct threat but hung over him like a sword.

The revelations form the most detailed picture yet of how Epstein systematically gathered kompromat on the global elite, and they raise urgent questions about what other secrets remain buried in the sprawling, still-unfolding Justice Department files, and about the moral calculus of a man who, by his own admission, ignored a predator’s convictions in pursuit of philanthropic glory.

The Women Named And The Web Of Deception:

The three women Gates identified are: Mila Antonova, a Russian-born bridge player; Karima Nigmatulina, a Russian nuclear physicist and academic; and Dr Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt, a medical entrepreneur based in the United States. The first two have previously been the subject of speculation after redacted documents leaked from Epstein’s estate; the third is a new name that underscores the breadth of Gates’s hidden life.

Antonova, now in her early 40s, met Gates around 2010 through the competitive bridge circuit, a world Gates has patronised. Their relationship, Gates told the committee, unfolded mostly in Europe and was known to his science adviser Boris Nikolic. Nigmatulina, a researcher at Imperial College London and later a consultant for the Gates Foundation, also had an affair with the billionaire that overlapped with his marriage to Melinda French Gates. Nesselrodt’s relationship, Gates said, predated his introduction to Epstein in 2011, yet Epstein somehow still learned of it, a sign of the financier’s wide-ranging information network.

The testimony makes clear that Nikolic, a Gates Foundation program officer and a mutual friend who introduced Gates to Epstein in 2011, was the linchpin. Gates admitted that he used Nikolic as an alibi on at least one occasion, telling him in London, “I was going to disappear and wanted him to show that I was meeting with him at that time.” Nikolic, he said, was “aware of the affairs because of our close relationship.” When Nikolic later sought to negotiate his departure from the Gates Foundation, Epstein flew to Seattle to assist him, and, Gates believes, extracted the compromising details in the process.

“It’s hard to characterise the Epstein stuff because there was never a direct threat of any kind,” Gates testified. “There was always this veiled language like ‘we should remain friends,’ you know, which made me wonder what Dr. Nikolic had shared with him.”

The Draft Emails: A Predator’s Playbook.

At the heart of the committee’s questioning were two unsent draft emails from 2013, released by the Department of Justice in December 2025 as part of the so-called “Epstein Files.” The emails, written by Epstein to himself, contain lurid, unsubstantiated claims: that Gates had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from “Russian girls,” that he sought antibiotics to pass to his then-wife Melinda without her knowledge, and that Epstein himself had facilitated sexual encounters. Gates flatly denied these allegations, both in a February 2026 town hall with Gates Foundation staff and in his congressional testimony.

“I never had an STD. I never gave medicines to anyone covertly,” Gates said. He acknowledged he might once have expressed concern about a possible infection to Nikolic but insisted it was unfounded. The emails, he argued, were a collage of “every potential negative thing [Epstein] knew, and some that are completely false,” a rehearsal for a blackmail scheme that was never executed. “If those emails that contained some truth and some false things were ever sent, then we could say there was an attempt at blackmail that never happened.”

This distinction, between “brainstorming”, blackmail and outright extortion, did not satisfy all members of the Oversight Committee. Representative Melanie Stansbury, a Democrat from New Mexico who participated in the closed-door session, later told reporters: “The fact that a convicted paedophile was drafting emails about using a billionaire’s infidelities as leverage, and that the billionaire admits he was worried about it, tells you everything about the ecosystem Epstein cultivated. The line between rehearsal and action is thin.”

Lesley Groff, Epstein’s long-time executive assistant, also testified on June 9, 2026, that she booked appointments for Epstein “almost daily” but denied ever scheduling meetings with individuals she believed were underage. Her testimony, released alongside Gates’s transcript, added little new light but reinforced the image of a meticulously managed operation that insulated the financier from direct observation of his crimes.

“I Was So Focused on Raising Funds That I Allowed That Goal to Override My Better Judgment”

Gates’s explanation for why he continued to meet with Epstein for three years after being introduced in 2011, despite knowing of Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida, is a study in billionaire exceptionalism. He told the committee he viewed Epstein as a “dilettante” with a surface-level knowledge of science and finance, but one who boasted connections to Wall Street and Middle Eastern billionaires that might open doors for the Gates Foundation’s global health initiatives.

“I was so focused on the possibility of raising funds for global health that I allowed that goal to override my better judgment,” Gates said. “If the time I spent with Epstein lent him credibility, I am deeply sorry. I’ve learned a significant lesson.”

The testimony details a series of dinners arranged by Epstein between 2011 and 2014, including gatherings with hotel magnate Thomas Pritzker, media tycoon Mort Zuckerman, and private-equity titan Leon Black, all of whom have previously faced scrutiny over their ties to Epstein. Gates said the meetings were a “dead end” and that he broke off contact in 2014 after concluding Epstein would never deliver meaningful philanthropic support. Yet the break was not clean: Epstein soon began a campaign to worm his way back into Gates’s life, using his knowledge of the affairs as a tool.

In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Epstein had emailed Gates seeking reimbursement for a software-coding course he had funded for Antonova. Gates told the committee he was “rather surprised” by the request, interpreting it as “a tactic [for Epstein] to reengage” with him. The request carried an implicit threat: pay me, or I might expose the affair that you’ve hidden from your wife and the world. Gates said he never paid.

A Culture Of Impunity And The Missing Voices:

Victims’ rights organisations have reacted with a mixture of grim recognition and outrage. “This is the playbook of a predator who understood power better than most prosecutors,” said Sarah Ransome, founder of the Survivors Matter Network, in a statement to this publication. “Epstein didn’t just traffic children; he trafficked secrets. The fact that a figure like Bill Gates felt he could navigate this grey zone for years, and only now acknowledges the ‘regret,’ underscores how deeply complicit our institutions are in protecting the powerful. The committee must now turn its attention to the enablers, not just the named names.”

Ransome, herself a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, noted that the Oversight Committee has so far interviewed a roll call of the elite, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Alan Dershowitz, among them, but has yet to compel testimony from many of the women who were trafficked. “The victims are once again being asked to watch from the sidelines while the men who orbited Epstein parse words,” she said.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who has pushed for full release of the Epstein files, issued a statement Tuesday: “Mr. Gates’s testimony confirms what many of us suspected: Jeffrey Epstein ran a covert influence and blackmail operation that compromised some of the most powerful people on the planet. We need to know who else is in those files, and we need to know what our own government did to enable him.”

The Geopolitical Shadow:

There is also a geopolitical undercurrent that has received less attention. Two of Gates’s admitted affairs were with Russian women, one of whom, Nigmatulina, had direct links to the Gates Foundation’s work. In an era of heightened concern about foreign intelligence operations, the convergence of a billionaire with intimate ties to global health policy, two Russian nationals, and a blackmail-adept financier with deep connections to Eastern Europe raises obvious security questions. The Oversight Committee’s questioning touched on this obliquely, but sources familiar with the closed-door session say members were reluctant to probe too deeply in an unclassified setting.

Gates dismissed any suggestion that the women were connected to Epstein. “He had nothing to do with them,” he told the panel. “He only learned about them later.” But the episode leaves a disquieting aftertaste: Epstein, who told confidants he had worked as an intelligence asset, may have collected this information for purposes beyond personal enrichment. The Justice Department’s 2024 report found “no credible evidence” that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, but the new testimony makes clear that he was, at a minimum, actively preparing to do so.

A Reckoning Still Incomplete:

Bill Gates has not been accused of any crime related to Epstein’s trafficking ring, and he has cooperated voluntarily with the Oversight Committee’s investigation. In his own February 2026 address to Gates Foundation staff, he struck a note of apology: “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit… It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein.” Yet the cascade of disclosures, the named women, the use of a subordinate as cover for infidelity, the admission that he “probably should have” dug into the specifics of Epstein’s sex crime conviction, has left even some of his staunchest allies uneasy.

Melinda French Gates, who divorced the billionaire in 2021 after the Epstein connection became public, has not commented on the latest testimony. Through a spokesperson, she directed inquiries to her earlier statements that she had warned Bill about associating with Epstein and had felt uncomfortable in his presence. The Oversight Committee is now expected to call Nikolic for a transcribed interview, while Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz also faces a closed-door session later this summer.

The Gates-Epstein chapter is far from closed. It is, instead, a synecdoche for an entire era of unaccountable wealth, hidden lives, and the quiet machinery of coercion that Jeffrey Epstein built, machinery that still clicks and whirrs in the vaults of the powerful, waiting to be fully exposed. As Representative Stansbury told reporters on the steps of the Capitol: “We owe it to every survivor to follow the evidence, no matter whose name is on the door.”

Source: Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies