Bill Gates calls himself 'foolish' for spending time with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates spoke to 9News Australia about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein on Wednesday and said he was "foolish" to spend time with him.

"I met Jeffrey in 2011," Gates said after Nine Network's political editor, Charles Croucher, pressed the tech billionaire on his relationship with the convicted sex offender. "So, over a period of three years, I had a number of dinners with him. The focus was always, he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. You know, in retrospect, that was a dead end." 

"And I've said many times, but I'll say again: I was foolish to spend time with him. I'm one of many people who regret ever knowing him," Gates added.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) released more than 3 million Epstein investigative records on Friday, including Epstein's personal emails. Some of the emails alleged that Gates had affairs and tried to get medication to treat a sexually transmitted infection. He also allegedly wanted to give the medication to his wife at the time, Melinda French Gates, without her knowing.

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A spokesperson for Gates denied the claims in a previous statement to Fox News Digital, which read, "These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false. 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."

Gates' ex-wife weighed in on the allegations related to her ex-husband during an interview on Tuesday.

"Well, let me say this. I think we're having a reckoning as a society, right?" Melinda French Gates said on NPR's "Wild Card" podcast. "No girl - 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. I mean, it's just, it's beyond heartbreaking, right?" 

"I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages, right?" she continued. "So, for me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage."

While saddened, she emphasized that these allegations are for people like her ex-husband to deal with. 

"But I have moved on from that. I purposely pushed it away and I moved on," French Gates said. "I'm in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life. So, whatever questions remain there, of what I don't - can't even begin to know all of it. Those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need the answer to those things, not me. Well, and I am so happy to be away from all the muck."

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Croucher also asked about the allegations and whether they were true.

"No, apparently Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent; the email is, you know, false. So I don't know what his thinking was there. You know, was he trying to attack me in some way? But it just reminds me, every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that," Gates responded.

Croucher also asked Gates why he thought Epstein would say these things about him.

"It's factually true that I was only at dinners, you know, I never went to the island, and I never met any women, and so, the more that comes out, the more clear it will be, that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior," Gates said.

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Fox News' Alexander Hall contributed to this report.