(WASHINGTON) — Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told the House Oversight Committee probing the government’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein that Gates “never victimized anyone” and that meeting with Epstein “was a grave error in judgment,” according to his prepared opening remarks.

Gates is facing questions Wednesday about his relationship with the late financier, marking one of the most high-profile interviews conducted by the Oversight Committee since it began probing the government’s handling of its investigations into the notorious sex offender.

“I never witnessed nor had any indication that Epstein was engaged in ongoing criminal conduct. I never went to his island, his ranch, or his Florida home. I have never victimized anyone,” Gates testified in his closed-door appearance, according to a copy of his prepared opening statement.

Gates said that Epstein sought to “foster a personal relationship” with him, but said his focus remained on using Epstein to recruit new donors for Gates’ global health initiative.

“My interactions with Epstein began with a limited number of preliminary meetings — three in 2011 and two in 2012 — during which I talked about the goals of my work,” Gates said, according to his statement. “We began more extensive conversations in 2013 and 2014. The discussions focused on identifying potential giving structures, such as donor-advised funds, and how to enroll individuals he claimed were interested in making significant contributions.”

Gates said he can “recall being aware that Epstein had faced prior legal issues” but added he “did not fully understand the extent of the crimes he committed,” per the statement.

He also told the committee that he Epstein learned “sensitive information about my personal life” — including that he had been unfaithful in his marriage to Melinda Gates.

“These affairs had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein, but they were painful for my family,” Gates said, according to the statement. “As the public can now see, based on what has been released in the files, Epstein was working to use information about my infidelities — in addition to many lies that he layered on top — to pressure me to re-engage with him. He was unsuccessful in this effort, but it shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda.”

In brief remarks to reporters on his way in Wednesday morning, Gates said, “I’ll start with an opening statement in the hearing room. I hope my testimony is helpful to the work, important work of the committee to find justice for the victims.”

Gates’ association with the late financier has roiled his nonprofit and reshaped the public perception of the tech billionaire who was once the world’s richest man.

“I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him,” Gates said in February.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) first reached out to Gates in March to schedule the behind-closed-doors interview, writing in a letter that the tech billionaire might “have information that will assist in its investigation.” In recent weeks, the Committee has conducted similar transcribed interviews with former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Epstein’s longtime executive secretary Lesley Groff.

“Gates welcomes the opportunity to appear before the Committee,” a spokesperson for Gates said in March. “While he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work.”

Gates’ relationship with Epstein faced a new wave of scrutiny earlier this year when the Department of Justice’s release of Epstein files included correspondence between the two men, as well as cryptic notes drafted by Epstein that hinted at Gates’ extramarital affairs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Gates apologized to the staff of his nonprofit during a town hall in February and acknowledged that he had affairs with two Russian women that Epstein later discovered. A spokesperson for Gates in a 2023 statement said that Epstein “tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.”

“In the town hall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions,” a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation told ABC News.

Melinda French Gates — who previously said her 2021 divorce from Bill Gates was driven in part by his association with Epstein — said earlier this year that the documents brought back memories of “some very, very painful times” in their marriage.

“Whatever questions remain there … those questions are for those people, and for even my ex-husband,” she said on NPR’s Wild Card podcast about what she described as a societal “reckoning” over the Epstein files. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”  

Members of the Oversight Committee have expressed a desire to learn whether Epstein used his sex trafficking network to lure in wealthy and influential men to blackmail — allegations that the DOJ and FBI said they found “no credible evidence” of last year.

Neither of the women who Gates acknowledged having affairs with — a Russian bridge player and nuclear physicist — were said to have been introduced to Gates by Epstein, though a spokesperson later said that Epstein sought to “leverage” his knowledge of one of his past relationships to “threaten” Gates.

The interview is also likely to touch on how Epstein was able to ingratiate himself with Gates just three years after pleading guilty to charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution. Gates has previously said he was aware of an “18-month thing” that limited Epstein’s travel, and he regrets not further investigating Epstein’s background.  

According to documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice, Gates first met Epstein in 2011.

“I won’t have time to do another meeting and I won’t be able to do the dinner with Jeff Epstein,” Gates wrote in a 2010 email to Boris Nikolic, his former science advisor. “I was looking forward to the dinner.”

Gates later said he hoped he could leverage Epstein’s relationships with “very rich people” to support his global health philanthropic efforts.

“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 told 9News Australia in February.

According to documents released by the DOJ, both men continued to communicate for at least three years, with Epstein at one point urging Gates to use a specific philanthropic vehicle known as a “donor advised fund” to make charitable contributions. At the time, Epstein compared donor advised funds to “cloud computing for the giving world.”  

“It is a good analogy,” Gates wrote in a February 2014 email. “It is clearer to me now than before and it could be a great thing.”

But by December 2014, Gates appeared to cool on Epstein’s proposal, suggesting in an email that the plan was not viable for him.

“In terms of the DAF I don’t think we have any people at this point who will move to do something soon,” Gates wrote. “It is a good idea, but it won’t come together with 4-6 partners anytime soon.”

In a statement earlier this year, the Gates Foundation said it did not move forward with Epstein’s fund and never transferred any funds to the disgraced financier.

“On the basis of Epstein’s claims that he could mobilize significant philanthropic resources for global health and development, a small number of foundation employees interacted with Epstein to try to secure this potential funding. Ultimately, the foundation did not pursue any collaboration with Epstein and no fund was ever created,” a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation said in February.

By March, the Gates Foundation commissioned an external review to assess its past engagement with Epstein as well as its policies for vetting philanthropic partnerships. Foundation officials said in a statement they expected to get an update about that review later this summer. 

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LIVONIA, Mich.) — Four people, including three relatives, were killed in a domestic mass shooting in Michigan, according to authorities.

The shooting was reported at a house in Livonia, about 20 miles outside of Detroit, at about 5:35 p.m. Tuesday, Livonia police said.

When officers arrived, a man walked out of the home with his hands raised and indicated “he had shot family members at the residence,” police said.

In a bedroom, officers found two adults who were fatally shot, police said.

Two more adults were found shot dead in the backyard, police said.

Three of the victims were family members of the suspect and the fourth victim was in a relationship with one of the slain relatives, police said.

The suspect was taken into custody, police said, noting that there’s no threat to the public.

“This is a tragic event, and our thoughts are with the families and loved ones affected by this incident,” police said in a statement.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHIGTON) — Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive secretary Lesley Groff told the House Oversight Committee Tuesday that the convicted sex offender was a “master manipulator” and that she was unaware of his crimes, according to her prepared opening remarks and multiple sources familiar with her closed-door testimony.

Groff appeared as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators, which to date has included interviews with former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Epstein’s longtime personal assistant Sarah Kellen, and a prison guard who was on duty the night Epstein died in his jail cell.

In her prepared opening remarks, Groff said she hoped her testimony would “dispel the false notions” that she “knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Groff said, according to a copy of the remarks shared with ABC News.

Groff said that since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she has struggled to sleep and eat, been the target of harassment and death threats, and been “shunned” by many of her friends and acquaintances.

Groff, who worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, was once described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.”

She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which she said, “remains her scarlet letter.”

“I am not a conspirator and I never would have agreed to this language,” Groff said in her prepared testimony.

Among her job requirements were scheduling Epstein’s frequent meetings with celebrities, scientists and politicians, booking Epstein’s daily massage appointments when he was in New York, and arranging travel for women linked to Epstein.

Groff said she was told when hired that Epstein’s typical day included a morning muffin, yoga and a massage. She said she made daily massage appointments for Epstein, but “never met any of the masseuses” and never heard from these women or from anyone else that they were minors or that they were sexually abused.

Groff also told lawmakers Tuesday that she never had a romantic or sexual relationship with Epstein and said the message appointments she scheduled for Epstein with young women and girls were with massage therapists, a source said.

Groff could not recall scheduling massages for anyone other than Epstein and former Goldman Sachs chief counsel Kathy Ruemmler at a spa, and said the masseuses were both male and female, sources said. She testified that she would receive the names of the massage therapists from Epstein, and that he instructed her to schedule the massages.

Sources said Groff told lawmakers that she scheduled most of the massages for Epstein’s New York residence. Groff testified that she never witnessed or knew of any sexual abuse.

Groff testified that she never met a single massage therapist in person and believes that Epstein — or Bella Klein, a one-time Epstein associate — would pay them with “petty cash,” sources said. Groff told lawmakers that she would occasionally send cash via couriers, said sources.

Groff said that from the moment she was hired in 2001, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell “established guardrails” and made it clear that she was replaceable.

She said she was told never to associate with their friends.

“Their business was none of my business,” she said she was told. She recalled that she was once “torched” by Epstein after he found out she had attended a party with one of his contacts, but he stopped short of firing her.

“In hindsight, I wish he had fired me,” she said.

Groff explained that she did not leave her job with Epstein after his arrest in 2006, because Epstein lied to her and “insisted that he had been blackmailed and set up,” she said in her prepared remarks.

“It was a shakedown, he claimed, for money,” she said. “In my mind, that was the reasons that he was treated so leniently by law-enforcement for such a serious crime.”

She described her now-deceased former boss as a “master manipulator and deceiver who separated his legitimate life from his secret life as an abuser” and made sure “those two worlds did not collide.”

“Members of the Committee, my heart breaks for these women. I believe them,” Groff said in concluding her opening remarks. “Words cannot express how badly I feel that I was employed by Mr. Epstein during the time he abused these women. I will live with this horrible feeling for the rest of my life. But what I cannot and should not live with are the false innuendos and accusations that I knowingly aided his evil conduct.”

Last September at a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol, Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda specifically called out Groff, alleging that Groff had called her so many times to go to Epstein’s place for a massage that she dropped out of high school before the ninth grade.

Lacerda — who was one of the key witnesses that led to Epstein’s 2019 indictment for child sex trafficking — told ABC News in an interview this week that Groff was the conduit to Epstein.

“Anything that had to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” Lacerda told ABC News in an interview, “had to go through Lesley Groff.”  

Michael Bachner, a lawyer for Groff, declined comment in advance of her appearance on Capitol Hill. He previously told ABC News that Groff “never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18, and had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever.”

“Ms. Groff, a parent herself, is incredibly shocked and deeply upset about the alleged wrongdoings of Mr. Epstein,” Bachner said.

After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Bachner informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that his client “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury.

Prosecutors informed her lawyers that “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused,” and that she should consider cooperating with the investigation, according to DOJ records released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Groff, now 59, eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein, and said that scheduling massages was “around 1%” of her job.  

Groff, who was hired by Epstein in 2001, told the FBI she was immediately struck by Epstein’s lifestyle and the company he kept, describing it as “pretty incredible to see all the people Epstein dealt with in politics, television, et cetera.”  

“Groff felt, ‘Wow,'” according to an FBI account of her interview.

Groff was initially paid a salary of $60,000 a year, but saw it doubled to $120,000 by Epstein four years later, DOJ records show.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that Epstein bought Groff a new Mercedes and paid for a nanny to ensure she would keep working for him.

“There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood,” Epstein said of Groff, according to the newspaper’s account.

Banking records included in the DOJ’s Epstein files indicate that Groff also received three payments of $100,000 and one for $110,000 from Epstein companies between 2016 and 2018, though the records do not indicate the reasons for the payments.

When Epstein was arrested a second time in 2019, she resigned, her lawyer told prosecutors.

“She felt betrayed and disgusted once the indictment came out,” Bachner wrote.

According to documents released by the Justice Department in response to the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, one victim — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse — told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on,” according to the DOJ records.

Federal prosecutors in 2021 informed Groff that she would not be charged, according to a statement from her attorneys.

“After a more than two-year investigation by the Department of Justice into Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct, which included lengthy interviews of witnesses and a thorough review of relevant communications, we have been informed that no criminal charges will be brought against Lesley Groff,” the statement said.

Lacerda said she hopes the congressional investigators press Groff for answers.

“I just think that she should be honest about it so that we can have some accountability here,” she said.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer said on his way in Tuesday morning that he believed Groff has “information that is very valuable to our investigation.”

“Hopefully, we’ll learn more today,” Comer said.

The chairman reiterated that the committee is conducting “the most thorough investigation ever of Epstein.”

“We’re bringing in the most important people in the whole Epstein criminal enterprise that are still alive, and hopefully we’ll get the truth to the American people. If there’s an opportunity for accountability, we sure want to see that happen,” he said.

Groff did not speak to reporters upon her arrival.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.