Melinda Gates says Jeffrey Epstein helped break up marriage

Melinda French Gates acknowledged in an interview on Thursday that her divorce from Bill Gates was in part because of his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“It was many things. But I did not like that he’d had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein,” she told CBS Mornings’ Gayle King. “I made that clear to him.” French Gates said she met Epstein “exactly one time, because I wanted to see who this man was. And I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door.”

She added, “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. So my heart breaks for these young women.”

As The Daily Beast reported in May, French Gates had cautioned her ex-husband about Epstein after meeting Epstein at his Upper East Side mansion in 2013, people familiar with the matter said last year.

Bill Gates issued a statement to CBS stating that his meetings with Epstein were a “substantial error in judgment” and a “mistake that I regret deeply.”

In the CBS interview, she offered additional details on their 27-year marriage. “On the day I got married, I never thought I would end up being divorced,” she said.

While Bill Gates has admitted to having at least one affair during their marriage, “I thought we had worked through some of that,” she said. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy. And I couldn’t trust what we had.”

“I would say we’re friendly at this point,” she said. “‘Friends’ is a different word for me, and that might come over time, but for me, there’s still healing that needs to happen. Certainly, I wish him well.”