One of the most long-standing theories about Jeffrey Epstein is that he maintained his power by blackmailing his ultra-elite peers. Now, after reams of released emails, there still isn't really any smoking gun evidence to that effect. But it doesn't mean there aren't potential clues. And perhaps the strongest one pertains to the pedophile financier's relationship with Bill Gates.
Now, this is Bill Gates on the left. Jeffrey Epstein is in the center. And to Jeffrey Epstein's right, which is very relevant, Boris Nicolich. You might not have heard of him, but he's relevant to this story. He was a senior science adviser for the Gates Foundation and a close associate of Epstein. Not clear when that photo was taken. What we do know is that in 2013, Nicolich was let go from the Gates Foundation and Epstein was advising him on how to handle the departure.
Now, related to that process, this is an email Jeffrey Epstein sent to himself in July 2013, and he appears to be drafting a letter from Boris Nicolich to Bill Gates. So, two men you saw in that image. And we're going to break this up because it's quite long. So, again, this is from Epstein to Epstein. So, slightly sort of strange context, but it says, "Dear Bill, the bill being Bill Gates, I cannot believe that you have chosen to disregard our friendship developed over the last 6 years. I am aware that accidents happen. It is how each of us has chosen to deal with this unfortunate event that has me dismayed beyond comprehension. You have decided to discharge me from my job. Had Larry, your PR person, tell me that I engaged in morally inappropriate behavior. Asked me to be the major actor in a cover up so that you can maintain the reputation that you have worked so hard to achieve. Asked me to recommit to a confidentiality agreement and have categorically told me that we cannot have any direct ongoing business relationship in total disregard for its impact on the public perception of my reputation."
So this is a letter which Jeffrey Epstein is drafting for it seems an adviser to Bill Gates who's just been fired and who is not happy about it. So in the next part of the email, we're not going to show you every single sentence from it, it's very long. The email then implies the reason Boris Nicolich has been fired is that Melinda Gates, so Bill's partner and co-director, I suppose, of the Gates Foundation, has found out something she disapproves of. So Melinda Gates has found out something and the result has been that this man has lost his job. Now Jeffrey Epstein is navigating Boris Nicolich, how to navigate this situation. And in his draft email, he suggests how Bill Gates should have responded to what's referred to here as an unfortunate event which has led to this man's departure. So he says, "If the shoe was on the other foot, I would have said, Boris, this is not your fault. I confess to Melinda, you didn't. It was in a moment of weakness, and I will do anything within my power to make it right for you. I have more money than anyone needs, and I assure you, I will structure something so that you will not be penalized for my error." Lucky for me, I have enough money to provide you. Though it will not heal the injury, it will make you secure in your future. In addition, I will bend over backwards to make sure your next career is rewarding and on an upswing. I appreciate the fact that this drastically alters your plans and I'm very aware of the career path you gave up to join the foundation. I am very sorry, but as I believe time heals all wounds, this will eventually pass. In that regard, I suggest I buy you the house that you had your heart set on. And in addition to 5 years of severance, we'll buy you out of the investment contract we had agreed 30 to 40% of a $100 million partnership for $30 million in today's dollars, terms and conditions will be agreed. That's what I would have done. And had I been in your shoes, what I did receive, however, was an unfriendly, strongly worded email."
So again, this is Epstein an email to himself. But it's a it seems to be a potential draft of an email that Boris Nicolich, you know, could send to Bill Gates. Presumably, you know, there'd be some editing to go on. And it's saying how Bill Gates should have responded to this incident. So, there's an unfortunate incident which upsets Melinda Gates. Which means that this man loses his job. Jeffrey Epstein is advising the man who's lost his job and he's saying, you know, Bill Gates, you've treated this man very badly. This is what I would have done. I would have paid you off handsomely, you know, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, right? Lots and lots of money involved here. And the next bit is the killer because the draft goes on to make some claims potentially revelations which read the right way could provide leverage for Nicolage if he wanted Gates to agree to the superior terms which are being suggested by Jeffrey Epstein. It says, "That's what I would have done had I been in your shoes." That's from what we read before. What I did receive, however, was an unfriendly worded email telling me how employable I am and that I should not look to you for any significant financial help in the future. To add insult to the injury, you then implore me to please delete the emails regarding your STD, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda, and the description of your penis. You also made it clear to me that I am not to refer to redacted as that is another topic that must remain between the two of us. In return for all of these requests, which I would have done without a second thought, I am not to attend meetings with Melinda, I should continue to provide you the same level of service and dedication that I have done so diligently until you are ready to discard me and our friendship."
Now, it's unclear if this draft was ever actually sent to Boris Nicolich, let alone whether a version of this was ever sent to Bill Gates. What this suggests to me though is a modus operandi, right? You say to a rich and powerful person, you've treated me badly. I want you to treat me better. And by the way, I happen to know a lot of damaging things about you. It's also got that very mafia talk. I would have been very loyal. Of course, I wouldn't have shared this information. You didn't really even need to ask me. Of course, I wouldn't have shared it. But the facts have changed. Epstein would later go on to send himself a more pithy drafted resignation note for Nicolich. So again, sent from Epstein to Epstein. "I have decided to resign my position effective immediately with the Bill Gates Foundation. I have not come to this decision quickly or without a great deal of thought. During the past few weeks, I have been caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill. I have the greatest respect for my friends of seven years and wish them both well. In my role as his right-hand man, I have been asked and wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate to the ethically unsound, and have been repeatedly asked to do things that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal. Though it was kindly suggested that I make a transition to a new position after my six years of servitude and that Bill would, in his words, give me two years severance pay, I feel it would be dishonest to myself and my future. From helping Bill to get drugs in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls to facilitating his illicit trysts with married women to being asked to provide Adderall for bridge tournaments as I am a medical doctor but have no prescription writing email."
Now that's a shorter email which includes, you know, again potentially even more damaging revelations. And what I read when I read that right is you can imagine this is a kind of note you would say to your boss, okay if we don't come to an agreement I've already written my resignation letter, you know and this is the resignation letter I will send to everyone in the company. You know it says some nice things about you it also says some unkind things about you hope you don't mind, right? That's how that reads to me now. Again, it's not clear if this was ever sent to anyone. It's not clear if it was sent to Boris Nicolage. It's not clear if it was ever sent to Bill Gates, but again, I think it shows you what kind of maneuver Epstein is potentially considering in this situation or what he's capable of. Bill Gates, as you'd imagine, for his part, has denied everything included in these drafts. So, a representative for Bill Gates says, "These claims from a proven disgruntled liar 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 to entrap and defame."
I'll go to you on this. We've got more on this story sort of some older context that I think sort of brings a bit more light to this, but I want to go to you first. Do you read these emails in sort of the same way I read them? It's strange because it's an email from Epstein to Epstein, so it doesn't prove that much on its own, but to me it does suggest a strategy. I mean it doesn't prove that Nicolich sent those emails but it does prove that blackmail is something which comes naturally enough to Jeffrey Epstein that he can write these emails in a way which is very structured, lays out the demands and lays out the leverage. Now, if I had to guess, I would say, "All right, the fact that it manages to condense so much potentially compromising information along with such clear and tangible demands that makes me think this wouldn't be his first rodeo is what I would have to say. And one of the things that has come out through the Epstein files and the photographs of Epstein's mansion is that of course there are these beds, but then there are these weird cameras in the corner. Now, I know we're going to talk a little bit about the gender elements of this a bit later, so I don't want to get too hung up on it, but it might be that he was very worried about these bedrooms getting robbed. It might be that he was worried about slipping and falling and cracking his head open and no one would be around to save him. The only other reason that I can think of is that it's a way of collecting compromising sexual material on people who are staying at his house."
Let's look at two pieces of previous reporting that I think might sort of help us to contextualize and interpret these new emails. So the first is a 2023 article from the Wall Street Journal and the claim made in this article is that Jeffrey Epstein appeared to threaten Bill Gates over an affair that Bill Gates had had with a Russian bridge player. Remember in that email there was sort of reference to Adderall for bridge tournaments and also Russian girls. This is a peculiar story in many ways because the two most important bits of context is first Jeffrey Epstein wanted something from Bill Gates which was for Bill Gates to invest $100 million in a charitable venture of his. Now Epstein wanted this charitable venture and both to provide him with a personal income so he'd get a certain cut sort of to manage the funds and also to help launder his reputation. And he believed that if Bill Gates got on board, other billionaires would follow. So he wanted to have this fabulous foundation and Bill Gates would give a hundred million pounds and then he'd go to all of these other billionaires and say, "Look, if Bill Gates is investing, you know, I know I'm a convicted pedophile, but Bill Gates is investing, which means it must be okay." So that's what he really wanted from Bill Gates. Now, on to the leverage. What was potentially his leverage according to this article from the Wall Street Journal? Well that's where the Russian bridge player comes in. So this is Mila Antonova. She's a Russian bridge player who met Bill Gates at a bridge tournament where they reportedly began an affair. That's a screenshot from a YouTube video she did about meeting Bill Gates. Now Antonova had an idea to start an online business to teach people how to play bridge and she sought funds for it. And in 2013, Boris Nicolich, so the Gates adviser we met earlier, who Jeffrey Epstein appeared to be sort of drafting an email from, introduced Antonova to Jeffrey Epstein.
And the Wall Street Journal reported this about why this introduction was apparently made. So Antonova and Nicolich met at Epstein's townhouse in November 2013 where she presented her proposal to Epstein who provided feedback. Documents show she was looking to raise $500,000 for the venture which she called Bridge Planet. Now its mission was to promote Bridge by creating quality tutorials for beginners and advanced players. So she's got a project sounds like quite a nice project to be fair. Nicolich, who's an associate of Bill Gates, has introduced her to Epstein as someone who could potentially fund this venture. Now Epstein ultimately didn't fund that venture. However, in 2014, Antonova stayed at Epstein's townhouse. She told the paper, "I didn't interact with him or with anyone else there." However, Epstein would later go on to pay for her to take a software engineering course. So Antonova apparently decided this website wasn't really a go. She'll retrain as a software engineer and Epstein pays for that course. So, we have Epstein building up a relationship with a woman who Gates is alleged to have had an affair with. We also have Epstein desperate for Gates to invest in his charitable foundation. And that's where the alleged threat comes in. So, this is from that Wall Street Journal article again. In 2017, Epstein contacted Gates about the Russian bridge player years after the relationship had ended. According to people familiar with the matter he sent an email to Gates asking to be reimbursed for the costs of Antonova's coding school. The people said the sum was immaterial for the two men and the tone of the message was that Epstein knew about the affair and could expose it. The people said the spokeswoman for Gates said he didn't make a payment. Mr. Gates had no financial dealings with Epstein. She said so you got this email sort of oh by the way maybe you could pay me back for this coding course I paid for for the girl that you had an affair with. Even though the money suggested here is trivial. So it seems as if you know Epstein is saying okay so you don't want to invest in my charitable foundation. Well maybe you could pay for the coding course I paid for for the girl you had an affair with. Nudge nudge wink wink.
So you can I mean it's not me making that inference. That's the Wall Street Journal making that inference. So again I think a relevant story. You can see how knowledge might become leverage which might become a threat. On that occasion there is no evidence that it did lead to any kind of payment. The idea Gates never had any financial dealings with Epstein though was a bit harder to sustain. So this is an article from 2019. So a bit earlier and this was from the New Yorker. So the article is about how the MIT media lab concealed funding from Jeffrey Epstein long after he had been convicted as a sex offender. Now the MIT Media Lab, it runs research groups. It brings together technologists, designers, social theorists, a sort of interdisciplinary forward-thinking institute, the kind of thing high-flying elites might like to fund. They often do. For our purposes, these are the key emails in that extensive article. So, in 2014, the director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, emailed the director of development and strategy, Peter Cohen, and said, quote, "Hi all, this is a $2 million gift from Bill Gates, directed by Jeffrey Epstein." Cohen, who's the director of development and strategy, in response saying this, "Great. For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey's name as the impetus for this gift. I've let two folks in central development who need to know know." So obviously only the people who need to know will know that this money is from Jeffrey Epstein or directed by Jeffrey Epstein. What does that mean? Now when this exchange was first reported a spokesperson for Gates told the New Yorker any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grant making for Bill Gates is completely false. Again there isn't a smoking gun here. It's possible Epstein was bullshitting. So, it could be that, you know, maybe he transferred the MIT lab $2 million and just claimed it was from Bill Gates because we know he thought that associating with Bill Gates would make him seem cleaner. Maybe it is that he had persuaded Bill Gates to give this 2 million. I mean, also the way that email is structured, it doesn't look they don't say we got this via Jeffrey Epstein from Bill Gates. They say we got this from Bill Gates, directed by Jeffrey Epstein, which is quite a different claim. But again you're seeing clues to a potential sort of relationship whereby Epstein had damaging information on Bill Gates and Bill Gates was pressured to provide financial support to Epstein and reputational support to Epstein which he may or may not have I suppose deferred to have acted upon.
So, the thing that I kind of want to talk about is why would the revelation of an affair be so damaging to Bill Gates? All right, plenty of people have affairs. It's in the news all the time. Why would this be such a big deal? Well, when he married Melinda Gates, there was no prenuptial agreement.
Oh, wow. I didn't know that. So when they eventually did divorce, which I think was in 2021, they had to come up with a negotiated settlement contract, there was something like $130 billion worth of assets to divide. There was also stocks and shares, so on and so forth. So it's wrong to think about this as my wife might be upset with me and she might make me sleep on the couch, right? I think that by the time you're having affairs of you know potentially that frequency, right, Russian girls plural rather than Russian girls singular and you're getting your mates involved and it's something of an open secret. And you're thinking about, you know, allegedly anyway, thinking about surreptitiously slipping your wife antibiotics to rid her of an STD that you gave her. I would say that the love is somewhat dead, right? We're not talking about a marriage of love and being afraid of hurting Melinda Gates. It's well, if I drive her to the point of divorcing me, I could half my net worth by tomorrow.
And so that's the real nature of the leverage there.
We should say the details of what he's saying Bill Gates has done, Bill Gates has obviously disputed. And also that it's also very possible that when you are threatening someone with leverage, you say, "And I could exaggerate."
Well, you throw the kitchen sink.
Yeah. So, it's we I don't think we can read from this that Bill Gates did everything in that email. But, you know, a threat to exaggerate is only threatening if there is something there.
Well, if there's some degree of plausibility to it. And that plausibility might not be because it's true and it happened. It might be well it's coming from me and I'm a trusted person. There's lots of reasons why a threat can be plausible but I mean I'm a believer in Occam's razor.
Yeah. I mean it also might have just happened exactly as it was described. We don't know. The latest leak has another telling exchange with another billionaire which is very much related to this story. So this is between Richard Branson and Jeffrey Epstein pictured here on Epstein's island. They've clearly been talking about how Epstein can be welcomed back into polite society. And this is an email from Richard Branson to Jeffrey Epstein. This is from September the 11th, 2013. "Dear Jeffrey, it was really nice seeing you yesterday. The boys in water sports can't stop speaking about it. Anytime you're in the area, would love to see you as long as you bring your harem," which is already pretty gross. But then this point one I think if Bill Gates were willing to say that you've been a brilliant adviser to him that you slipped up many years ago by sleeping with a 17 and a half year old woman and were punished for it that you've more than learned your lesson and have done nothing that's against the law since and yes as a single man you seem to have a penchant for women but there's nothing wrong with that anyway something along those lines." The rest of it is details I'm not going to read so I think this is a really interesting insight into what very rich people think about Epstein at the time and what they're all discussing. So this idea you slipped up, yes you've been found guilty of procuring a minor for sex but you know I think probably Epstein had told him they were 17 and a half, you know it's a slip up you're an interesting guy with lots of money let's see what we can do now. Before I go to actually I just want to make a clarification which I think is quite important because I was looking before this show what would someone have known in 2013 about the ages of the girls that Jeffrey Epstein had procured sex with or groomed. And there was reporting from the police and from media sources that the girls were as young as 14. So that was in the public domain. But in the plea bargain, so what Jeffrey Epstein had been found guilty of in a court of law and what he had or what he had, I suppose, plead guilty to because that's why he got that really sweet deal. Just said under 18. So you can imagine Epstein have said, "Oh yeah, there were all sorts of salacious things written in the newspapers, but all I've actually been found guilty of is procuring sex from an under 18 year old. And the only reason I admitted to that is because there was a girl who was 17 and a half and they had proof of that." So you can see, you know, I mean, I think doing due diligence and looking up the reporting, you know, the very credible reporting at the time that was saying they were 14 would have been a good idea, but you can see how this would have happened. I suppose I want your thoughts on this.
Well, one of the things that's been popping up on social media is that when the Me Too allegations first broke, there seemed to be this full-court press to sort of, you know, in parts of the media to say, well, this is just a form of hysteria, right? You know, what you're trying to do is make it seem criminal and violent for powerful men to enjoy themselves sexually, right? You know, and to not marry every single woman who they have sex with. And there seemed to be this kind of a culture war around it and a culture war where one side was trying to say, "How dare you demonize ordinary sexual behavior?" And something which I then I didn't think of at the time and now I am thinking of is like, well, maybe that does look like ordinary sexual behavior to you.
Maybe the treatment of women as a sexual commodity, the utter dehumanization and instrumentalization for that purpose to the extent that it doesn't matter if your mate gets done on a pedophilia charge. Maybe that is normal to you. And again we can talk about how is it that these men have come to that idea like what is it that's in the environment that they're in which normalizes that for them. But it sort of strikes me that that was what some of that Me Too backlash was being driven by. It was a sense of, well, if you're demonizing this guy for behaving that way or that guy for behaving that way, then you're going to look at, you know, the sexual proclivities of me and my friends and we don't want that to come into question.
Let's look at I mean, you were talking earlier, I mean, you said earlier, we won't look at the gendered aspect of this as if sort of like I said, Ash, I know this is a Jeffrey Epstein story, but let's not focus on gender. I didn't say that, by the way. But we more explicit. We are going to more explicitly discuss.
He said aiming the revolver under the desk.
Why does everything have to be about gender? It's just all it was doing was
It's just sex trafficking.
Just just sex trafficking women by powerful men. You know, it's not necessarily gender.
Men get trafficked too and women traffic men. I don't know if women traffic men. They probably don't. Okay. Okay, let's look at how two different people say they related to Epstein during this period. And we're going to look at Bill Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda Gates. So this is Bill Gates speaking in 2021.
Can you explain your relationship with Epstein? Did you have any concerns? Was there ever any concerns you had about it?
