Warren Buffett Excludes Bill Gates From Annual Charity Giving

Bill Gates is well and truly out in the cold after his closest billionaire friend, Warren Buffett, axed the Gates Foundation from his yearly charity donations over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Gates, 70, spent two decades building joint philanthropy projects with Buffett, 95, who has poured more than $43 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock into the Gates Foundation since 2006. This year, CNBC reports, Gates got nothing.

Buffett steered every share of his annual giveaway to four family-linked charities. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (named after Buffett’s late first wife) received 9 million Class B shares, while the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (led by Buffett’s son), the Novo Foundation (established by Buffett’s son Peter and his wife, Jennifer), and the Sherwood Foundation (founded by Buffett’s daughter, Susan) each received 1 million shares.

Buffett set none aside for the organization Gates runs with ex-wife Melinda French Gates, 61.

The freeze-out follows a Wall Street Journal report that Buffett was withholding his gift until the foundation finished probing Gates’ links to Epstein.

Gates featured throughout roughly three million pages of Epstein files the Justice Department released in January, though nothing suggested he broke the law, and he faces no investigation.

The January dump revealed that Epstein appeared to claim he had arranged “sex with Russian girls” on Gates’ behalf, in messages dated years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

One draft message referenced a sexually transmitted disease allegedly tied to one encounter and discussed secretly slipping antibiotics to French Gates. No evidence shows the emails ever reached Gates, who has categorically denied the claims.

Gates later addressed the fallout at a foundation town hall, admitting to affairs with two Russian women during his marriage. He named a bridge player he met at bridge events and a nuclear physicist he met through business, and insisted he did “nothing illicit.”

The disclosures also showed Epstein threatened in 2017 to expose the affair with bridge player Mila Antonova, after Gates’ then-science adviser, Boris Nikolic, tipped Epstein off.

Buffett spelled out the tension between the two men in a March sit-down with CNBC’s Becky Quick, saying he had not spoken to Gates “at all since the whole thing was unveiled” and did not want to risk a witness call. The pair co-founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 and had been friends since the early 1990s.

Gates, who testified before the House Oversight Committee in June, told foundation staff that his time with Epstein was a “huge mistake.” His ex-wife has said the friendship helped end their marriage.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Gates Foundation for comment on this story.