Emily Glazer

A spokesperson for Bill Gates had said that at least some of these emails that were in the DOJ Epstein files are, quote, absolutely absurd and completely false, end quote.

Gates had a previously scheduled town hall, so it was already on the books.

They're known internally as BG Unplugged.

And the Gates Foundation employees gathered in the atrium.

This is in their Gates Foundation Seattle headquarters.

And from the very beginning, the first question he's asked is to give context as to why his name appears in the DOJ's Epstein files.

And for the first time in quite a while, at least what I was hearing from a lot of my sources, is that they felt like the mission and what was coming out about Bill were just not aligned.

From doing reporting on this, the sense that I get now was that some thought that this town hall, if he opened himself up and like bared his soul and acknowledged mistakes he had made in his personal life, that it would try to put an end to all of this chatter around Bill Gates.

It actually had the opposite effect.

And it was only angering them more.

And days before his keynote, his name is suddenly not appearing in certain key attendee searches on the conference website.

And then Indian government officials are telling local news agencies that his invitation is being reviewed because of his appearance in the Epstein files.

What's super interesting is around this time, the Gates Foundation's India office tweeted, quote, Bill Gates is attending the AI Impact Summit.

He will be delivering his keynote as scheduled.

So Bill is staying at the Oberoi.

It's this very fancy hotel where a lot of statespeople tend to stay.

And ultimately, one of his Gates Foundation executives received word from the Indian government that it would actually be better if Gates was not part of the summit because of the heightened Epstein news and that they felt like that was going to take away from the AI focus.

And they ultimately had to tweet that he wouldn't be giving the keynote address.

Then we get to early May, where his good pal, longtime pal, Warren Buffett, the company Berkshire Hathaway that Warren Buffett led for many years, had its annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, which is always known to be this huge event.

People trek from all over the world to go there.