Jeffrey Epstein tried to 'threaten' Bill Gates using alleged affair: report

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein reportedly tried to use Bill Gates' affair with a Russian bridge player to threaten the Microsoft co-founder.

"Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates," a spokeswoman for Gates told The Wall Street Journal in an article Sunday.

The "past relationship" was an affair Gates had with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, whom he met around 2010 when she was in her 20s, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Journal.

Epstein, who pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008, became a registered sex offender and spent 13 months in a work-release program, met Antonova in 2013, documents show. Epstein later paid for her to attend software coding school. 

"Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school. Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that," Antonova said. "When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could."

Antonova declined to comment on the alleged relationship with Gates and said she had "no idea" that Epstein "was a criminal or had any ulterior motive."

"I just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help," she also said. "I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did."

Years after the alleged affair ended, Epstein sent an email to Gates in 2017 and asked to be reimbursed for her coding school, people with knowledge of the situation said. At the time, Gates was married to Melinda Gates, but the couple divorced in 2021. 

While both men were perfectly capable of paying for the schooling, Epstein's tone of the message implied that he knew about the alleged relationship and could expose it, the people also said.

Gates' spokeswoman said he did not pay Epstein, who died in a Manhattan federal jail cell in 2019 while awaiting charges related to sex trafficking.

"Mr. Gates had no financial dealings with Epstein," she said. 

The alleged affair and subsequent threats come as more information is being exposed about Epstein's ties to other high-profile individuals, such as Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.