Buffett says not donating to Gates Foundation isn’t over Epstein ties

Despite skipping over his annual donation to the Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett downplayed Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates’ relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a mistake he might have made himself.

“While it’s distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes, hiring all kinds of people, or choosing friends, and then finding out later that, one way or other, they weren’t what I thought they were. I found nothing in there that was beyond what I could picture myself doing,” he said in an interview with CNBC released Wednesday.

Buffett, one of the richest men on Earth, avoided linking his decision not to donate to Gates’ controversial ties to Epstein.

Gates claims he never had a personal relationship with Epstein but met with him several times between 2011 and 2014 to discuss donors Epstein claimed he could mobilize for The Gates Foundation. 

In a February statement, the Gates Foundation said, although “a small number of foundation employees interacted with Epstein to try to secure this potential funding,” the foundation did not pursue any collaboration with Epstein and no fund was ever created.

Buffett said during Wednesday’s CNBC interview that he decided to donate the rest of his money through family foundations so his children can oversee how the money is spent. He hopes his children will distribute all of his Berkshire Hathaway shares, where most of the 95-year-old investor’s $140 billion is held, over the next eight years.

“I reevaluated my whole situation,” Buffett said. “What happened was that I gave the Gates Foundation a great deal of money. I thought that was a good decision. I think it was a decent decision, but I did not think my kids were in any way ready to give away vast sums of money.”

In a statement to The Seattle Times, Gates called Buffett “one of the greatest philanthropists of all time” and “a dear friend.”

“His wisdom, generosity, and deep sense of purpose have defined both his life and his philanthropy,” Gates said.

Since Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, started the Gates Foundation 26 years ago in Seattle to reduce disease and poverty worldwide, Buffett has donated more than $47 billion to the foundation, making him the charity’s largest individual donor. In his statement, Gates said Buffett’s donations to his foundation have helped save millions of lives.

“My gratitude to Warren is immeasurable, and I cherish the time we spend together. I hope we have much more of it ahead,” Gates said.

Buffett, one of the most successful investors in history, bonded with Gates over their shared commitments to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes. So when Buffett left the foundation out of his annual charitable donations Tuesday, the omission made international headlines.

The news wasn’t a surprise, however. The Wall Street Journal had reported last month that Buffett would skip his typical midyear donation to the Gates Foundation to wait to see the findings of a review into the foundation’s ties to Epstein. The publication cited anonymous sources.

This year, a trove of documents released by the Justice Department tied Gates to Epstein. The registered sex offender from a 2008 conviction was accused of rape and operating a sex-trafficking ring involving young women and girls before he was found dead in his jail cell in 2019.

Since then, the general public and lawmakers have besieged the billionaire, questioning whether Gates knew about Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking or ignored his criminality to continue a mutual relationship leveraging each other’s vast networks of wealth and social capital.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Gates apologized to foundation staff, admitting he had made mistakes that had cast a cloud over the foundation while insisting he hadn’t participated in Epstein’s crimes.

The Gates Foundation has retained law firm WilmerHale to review its ties to the late sex offender, according to The Wall Street Journal, and its findings are expected this summer.

In a June 10 interview with members of Congress, Gates denied knowing details about Epstein’s well-publicized criminal conviction. He told lawmakers he did not witness or participate in any of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

However, Gates told lawmakers Epstein may have contemplated blackmailing him over two of his three extramarital affairs.

Epstein emailed himself saying that he was caught up in a marital dispute between Gates and his then-wife, according to documents released by the DOJ in January.

Epstein said he was “helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trysts, with married women.”

Gates has denied most of the contents of the email, admitting only that he had several affairs.

In the months leading up to Gates’ June interview with lawmakers, Buffett had publicly distanced himself from his longtime friend.

Buffett said in a March interview with CNBC that he hadn’t spoken to Gates since his ties to Epstein were revealed. 

“I don’t want to be in a position where I know things … to be called as a witness,” he said.

But in Wednesday’s CNBC interview, Buffett changed his tune, saying the two have had “a wonderful friendship” over the years.

Buffett said he and Gates remain in contact and recently “spent three hours talking together” in Omaha. Gates plans on meeting with him again, he said.

The Gates Foundation released a statement Tuesday thanking Buffett for his decades of donations. His gifts “expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world,” the statement said.

Despite losing its largest single donor, the foundation said it “continues from a position of financial strength” until its planned closure in 2045 thanks to Gates’ own fortune. Last year, Gates pledged to donate virtually all of his remaining wealth, estimated at $200 billion, to the foundation over the next two decades.

The Gates Foundation underwrites The Seattle Times’ Education Lab. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over all of its content.