Bill Gates has broken his silence on his past association with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, saying he regrets “every minute” he spent with the pedophile.The billionaire’s comment comes as the US justice department released millions of new documents revolving around Epstein’s powerful network. The Microsoft co-founder denied allegations linked to his name in the files. He said the claims in the draft emails linked to Epstein were untrue and “absolutely absurd,” in an interview with 9 News Australia. “Every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that,” Gates said.Gates claimed that he was being targeted by Epstein: “Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false. I don’t know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way?”The documents, released by the US Department of Justice on Jan. 30, include more than three million records related to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein’s victims, and his appearance in the files does not imply criminal activity.The new batch of files includes two draft emails dated July 18, 2013, sent from Epstein’s email account back to itself. The messages are unsigned and no email account associated with Gates appears. One email is written like a resignation letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and mentions medicine allegedly obtained for Bill “to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls”. Another claims Gates tried to hide a sexually transmitted disease from his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.Gates rejected those allegations. “I never went to the island, I never met any women,” he said. He added: “And so, the more that comes out, the more clear it’ll be that, although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.”Gates said he first met Epstein in 2011 and that their interactions were limited to dinners until 2014, centred on discussions about philanthropy. Bill said, “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.”He added, “In retrospect, that was a dead end. I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.”A spokesperson for Gates reiterated the denial in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. “These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false,” the spokesperson said. They added: “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.”

‘So happy to be away from all the muck’: Melinda Gates

Gates’s ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, who divorced Bill Gates in 2021 after 27 years of marriage, said the revelations reopened painful memories. “For me, it’s personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage,” she told NPR’s Wild Card podcast.She added: “Whatever questions remain there of what I don’t — can’t even begin to know all of it — those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And, I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.”Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges involving minors and was found dead a month later in a New York jail in an apparent suicide. His right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, is still serving 20 years in a low security prison.