
Did Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, publicly say in January 2025 that he "will leave the USA if the Epstein Client List is released"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no credible reports to support Gates' supposed announced departure. Court materials detailing Jeffrey Epstein's contacts were made public in January 2024. Neither Gates nor any reputable news organization stated that Gates changed the country of his residency since then.
The claim reappeared in a post (archived here) on X, published on January 25, 2025, with a caption that read:
🚨BREAKING:
Bill Gates says he will leave the USA if the Epstein Client List is released.
What's your reaction??
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 14:52:22 2025 UTC)
The name of the account that posted the claim included the name of U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, but its self-description (archived here) said that the account was not affiliated with her real account on the same platform.
The post implied that Gates' alleged statement was widely reported but offered no sources.
A search across January 2025 news articles indexed by Google News for the keywords seen here (archived here) didn't show credible media reports corroborating the claim.
Gates' account on X (archived here) lists his location as Seattle, Washington. Lead Stories searched the account but found no mentions of Epstein's name.
A Google search (archived here) across Gates' blog (archived here) showed no results, too.
The claim has been circulating online since at least December 2023 and was previously reviewed by Reuters.
In January 2025, the claim resurfaced the day after the Wall Street Journal published a video interview with Gates recorded in California. It didn't mention a "client list" or relocation from the U.S.
At the 8:15 mark, Gates talks about Epstein:
In retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him. And he, sort of, got time with various people by spending time with other people. So yes, I think I was quite stupid. I thought it would help me with global health philanthropy. In fact, it failed to do that it was just a huge mistake.
As reported by the New York Times (archived here) in 2019, Gates met Epstein on multiple occasions after the financier already pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008 (archived here).
In 2023, the Wall Street Journal (archived here) wrote that the disgraced financier "appeared to threaten" the Microsoft co-founder over what was described as an "affair" with Russian-born bridge player Mila Antonova, who was in her 20s when she met Gates.
On January 3 and January 4, 2024, the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York unsealed the documents (archived here) detailing Epstein's social and business interactions. Since then, 943 pages (archived here) have been in the public domain. However, as of this writing, no news organization (archived here) reported that it made Gates move to another country.
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Lead Stories previously debunked other false claims mentioning the "Epstein client list" and public figures such as Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Jimmy Kimmel.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of the claim about Bill Gates can be found here.