Simon Marks

Well, it was extraordinary stuff, Claire.

And of course, Bill Gates is one of the principal witnesses that the House Oversight Committee has wanted to hear from for many, many months.

Finally, they were able to take testimony from him yesterday.

The head of the Gates Foundation, the founder of Microsoft, coming forward, providing a written statement as an opening statement.

addressed to the committee, in which he said that he never witnessed Jeffrey Epstein engaging in any ongoing criminal conduct, never had any indication that criminal conduct was taking place.

I never went to his island, his ranch or his Florida home.

I have never victimized anyone, Bill Gates said.

He accused Jeffrey Epstein of seeking to foster a personal relationship with him

He said, I was never interested in that and never reciprocated.

But then in his closed-door testimony for members of that House Oversight Committee – and we know the details of this from some of those members who then briefed reporters afterwards –

It was evident that Bill Gates offered detailed testimony about a relationship with the disgraced and deceased financier that lasted at least from 2011 until 2014, and that it was only Mr. Gates' now former wife, Melinda Gates, who moved in and said, we need to stop communicating with this man.

Cut it off.

We should not be engaging in any communications with him.

She definitely smelt a rat, understood that there was something very wrong going on that Bill Gates himself did not necessarily recognise.

Yeah, I mean, it was evident from the testimony, as retold by Republicans and Democrats on the committee, that Bill Gates thought that in Jeffrey Epstein he had found someone who might be able to furnish funding for the Gates Foundation and might be able to connect him to other people who would be able to furnish funding for the Gates Foundation.

There are, of course, questions about that, given the scale of Bill Gates' own personal fortune.

You know, this idea that he was out...

engaged in expending shoe leather on trying to find additional donors for the foundation, secured some quizzical responses from members of the committee yesterday.

But also there was evidence that Mr Gates furnished that Jeffrey Epstein was looking to sign Bill Gates up

as a client of his.