Bill Gates was threatened by Jeffrey Epstein after the late sex offender discovered the Microsoft co-founder was having an affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, according to the Wall Street Journal.
As detailed in the Wall Street Journal's new report, Gates started having an affair with Antonova in 2010. At the time she met Epstein in 2013, Antonova was looking for investors to help her fund for a new business, BridgePlanet. Epstein later funded Antonova's enrollment in coding school.
"I just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help," Antonova told the Journal. "I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did."
His knowledge of Antonova's affair allegedly resulted in a 2017 email in which Epstein, who was attempting to get Gates involved in a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund with JP Morgan Chase, threatened he would expose the the Microsoft co-founder.
"Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes," a spokeswoman for Gates told WSJ. "Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates."
Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on Aug. 10, 2019. According to court documents, the 66-year-old was placed on suicide watch sometime that July, after he was found unconscious with a bed sheet around his neck; however, a post-suicide watch report painted Epstein as a cooperative inmate who had no intentions of killing himself.
