When Melinda Gates worked out her divorce settlement from Bill Gates, she ended up walking away from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It was renamed the Gates Foundation post-divorce. Melinda was a huge part of building the foundation into the global charity leader it is today, and she had a unique ability to connect at a human level to the foundation’s work on the ground. I was sad when she left the foundation and I wondered why she was leaving when there was still so much she could do, without even having to see or speak to her ex. Well, I no longer have those questions. I know why she walked away – she didn’t want any further connection to Bill at that level, and she was likely worried about how Bill’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein would play out for the foundation long-term.
For months now, the hits have kept coming for Bill – he’s all over the Epstein files, and Epstein either had significant kompromat on Bill, or Epstein was manufacturing kompromat on Bill. At first, Bill furiously denied all of the stories in the Epstein Files, then a few months later, he backtracked and admitted that some of the stories were true. Warren Buffet – who is something like a surrogate father to Bill – has even cut ties with Bill. Buffet won’t even commit to making any more contributions to the Gates Foundation in the future. Suddenly, the largest and richest foundation in the world looks compromised. So now the foundation has ordered an external review of the Gates-Epstein connections and claims.
Billionaire Bill Gates’ links to the disgraced pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein are to be examined by his own charitable foundation, it has announced. The Seattle-based Gates Foundation has been reeling from Epstein-related fallout since a January dump of files by the U.S. Department of Justice exposed extensive contact between the late sex offender and the Microsoft co-founder, who has given more than $60 billion towards global health projects.
The most incendiary material was a batch of draft emails from 2013 in which Epstein appeared to boast about arranging sexual encounters for Gates, now 70, and procuring him drugs to conceal a sexually transmitted disease from his then-wife Melinda—allegations Gates has strongly denied.
On Tuesday, the foundation revealed that it had begun an “external review” sometime “early this year.” It is expected to return its findings before the fall. The foundation said in a statement to Reuters: “Early this year, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships. That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer.”
In a memo sent to staff in March, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Suzman said that the organization faced a challenging moment that demanded “tough actions now.”
The Journal also reported that the foundation plans to axe up to 500 positions—around 20 percent of its global workforce—by 2030.
The Daily Beast asked the Gates Foundation if it continued to have faith in Bill Gates as its chair. A spokesperson did not address the question in its response, instead telling the Daily Beast that neither announcement was new. “These were included in an update from CEO Mark Suzman to all foundation employees on a range of topics related to foundation operations,” they said.
His staff is not the only audience he must soon face. As the Daily Beast reported early last month, Gates is being hauled in for a closed-door transcribed interview before the House Oversight Committee on June 10 as part of its sweeping probe into Epstein’s network of powerful associates. He has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
You know what’s sad? If the external review says that Bill Gates has to go, that will basically be the biggest “thing” to happen to any Epstein associate in the US. Almost all of the Epstein-class Americans have remained untouched, save for some academics. Now, do we think that the external review will end up finding that Gates lied about a lot of his Epstein connections? Do we think that Gates could genuinely be pushed out of his own foundation? Eh. I don’t know. It depends on who’s doing the external review.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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