Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Wednesday that she has formally requested House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoena Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to testify about his past interactions with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Last night, I watched Melinda Gates interview. I immediately asked the chairman of oversight, James Comer, to subpoena, Bill Gates,” Mace wrote Wednesday on X.
“I have questions for Bill Gates about Epstein,” she added.
Mace’s request follows renewed scrutiny of Epstein’s network after the Justice Department released another batch of documents related to the late financier, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
The issue gained further attention after Melinda French Gates, Gates’ ex-wife, publicly urged him to answer lingering questions about his association with Epstein during an interview Tuesday on NPR’s “Wild Card” podcast.
“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,” French Gates said. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”
Bill Gates addressed the controversy in a Wednesday interview, acknowledging that he met with Epstein multiple times and expressing regret over the relationship. Gates said the meetings involved several dinners and were focused on securing funding for global health initiatives.
“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. In retrospect, that was a dead end,” Gates said.
“I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him. The more that comes out, the more clear it will be that, although the time was a mistake, it has nothing to do with that kind of behavior,” he added.
However, the newly released Justice Department files raised additional questions. Gates was referenced in an email Epstein sent to himself, in which Epstein claimed Gates had asked him to delete emails related to a sexually transmitted disease and a request for antibiotics that Epstein could “surreptitiously” give to Gates’ then-wife.
French Gates also described the personal toll the allegations have taken on her.
“For me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right?” she said. “Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage. But I have moved on from that. I purposefully pushed it away, and I moved on. I’m in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life.”
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