Bill Gates hires big guns to help prepare for Epstein grilling: reports

Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, has been getting the best help available to prepare for his upcoming testimony to US lawmakers running an investigation on the activities of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, with The New York Times reporting the tech mogul has turned to the man who was until recently spearheading the inquiry. The New York Times report, citing two people affiliated with the Gates Foundation familiar with the arrangement, said Jake Greenberg – the former chief investigations counsel for the House Oversight Committee – has been helping Gates ahead of his testimony on Wednesday (US time). From left, James Staley, then a JPMorgan Chase executive; former Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers; Jeffrey Epstein; Bill Gates; and Boris Nikolic, a Gates Foundation adviser, in a 2011 image released . The Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee has been examining the US government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and called on Gates to testify after the release of the so-called Epstein files. The tech billionaire came under scrutiny after the files showed that Gates had met with Epstein multiple times. The files also included a claim “surreptitiously give” to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, from whom he is now divorced. Gates has denied the allegations and has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. In February he told Nine Network’s chief political editor, Charles Croucher, that he “regretted” ever meeting the convicted sex offender. Loading “Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false, so I don’t know what his thinking was there. It just reminds me every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologise that I did that,” Gates told Nine. “I met Jeffrey in 2011, the focus was always [that] he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. “You know, in retrospect, that was a dead end, and I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.” Members of the House Oversight Committee will interview Gates behind closed doors, as they have done with other witnesses in the investigation, including former US president Bill Clinton and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. In preparation for the testimony, Gates has not only sought out the expertise of Greenberg, who was until December the top investigator for the committee, but also other insiders, with The Wall Street Journal reporting in May that the tech mogul had hired former Justice Department lawyer John Moran to help with his dealings with the committee.