Melinda French Gates is publicly confronting the latest Jeffrey Epstein court disclosures naming her ex-husband, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, just weeks after tax files showed he transferred nearly $8 billion to her independent foundation under the terms of their divorce settlement.
Files released by the Justice Department last week show Epstein had drafted notes to and about the billionaire, suggesting Gates had engaged in extramarital affairs, although representatives for Gates have repeatedly shot down the allegations.
“These claims—from a proven, disgruntled liar—are absolutely absurd and completely false,” Gates representatives told the New York Times. “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.”
Still, French Gates said in an NPR interview yesterday that Gates and others mentioned in the Epstein files need to address the allegations.
“Whatever questions remain there … for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer to those things, not me,” she told NPR. “And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”
French Gates and Gates split in 2021, a time French Gates told Fortune that was “unbelievably painful in innumerable ways.” Following their divorce, French Gates left the Gates Foundation, an $86 billion charitable organization set to shutter in 2045. French Gates now runs her own foundation, Pivotal Philanthropies, focused on gender equality and global health.
Gates donated a record $8 billion to Pivotal, a move that was mapped out in their divorce settlement, according to a tax filing, as previously reported by the New York Times’ DealBook.
Gates ‘has to answer’
French Gates told NPR that Gates and others referenced in the newly released Justice Department files “have to answer” for what’s described in the documents, and said she felt “unbelievable sadness” about what the files show.
“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,” French Gates said. “I mean, it’s just—it’s beyond heartbreaking. I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages.” (French Gates’ daughters are entrepreneur Phoebe Gates, 23, and medical student Jennifer Gates, 29.)
French Gates also said the details shown in the recent Epstein files reopen “very, very painful times” in her marriage, and underscore a broader societal “reckoning” over how powerful men enabled Epstein’s abuse.
Philanthropy after a high-profile split
French Gates’ comments landed less than a month after public filings revealed Gates had transferred nearly $8 billion to Pivotal. The payment was made in 2024, but was only recently disclosed in recent tax records. It’s part of a larger $12.5 billion pledge Gates committed to as part of the couple’s 2021 divorce settlement and their subsequent decision to separate their philanthropic work.
The transfer ranks among the largest charitable donations ever made public and effectively seeds French Gates’ breakaway philanthropy at a moment when she has stepped out from under the shadow of the Gates Foundation, which told Fortune first last summer it would shutter in 2045. The organization has already begun ramping up its closure efforts by committing a record $9 billion this year and making job cuts.
Epstein ties and the end of a marriage
French Gates has previously acknowledged her unease about her ex-husband’s relationship with Epstein.
“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no,” French Gates told CBS in March 2022. “I made that clear to him.”
French Gates has also spoken about learning of Gates’ admitted affair with a Microsoft employee, which she said was one of many “betrayals” in their marriage.
The fresh Epstein disclosures and French Gates’ insistence that Gates and others must address the allegations directly highlight how reputational risk can follow even the most established philanthropists long after business and personal ties are severed. But now French Gates controls one of the world’s best-capitalized women’s rights philanthropies, funded, in no small part, by a record-setting divorce payment from a man whose conduct is now back under a magnifying glass.
