Nicholas Kristof Used Times Column, Books To Promote Bill Gates and Denounce Sex Trafficking—But Never Mentioned Gates’s Close Ties to Jeffrey Epstein

New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof used his columns to promote the embattled tech mogul Bill Gates as recently as December 2025, even as unflattering revelations about Gates's close personal ties to Jeffrey Epstein—and the Microsoft billionaire's infidelities—spilled into public view. Kristof was also boosting Gates at the same time as he was denouncing Epstein for sexually exploiting women, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of the columnist’s writings.

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Bill Gates 'voluntarily' explains his Epstein ties to Congress



Bill Gates knew Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender. He met with him anyway — for years. On Wednesday, he had to explain that to Congress.

The 70-year-old Microsoft co-founder appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for a closed-door, transcribed interview. The session lasted nearly six hours.

'I guess if you're a big deal, you can do more than the rest of us.'

On his way in, Gates told reporters he was "glad to be here voluntarily." He retained Jake Greenberg, who until December was the Oversight Committee's chief investigations counsel. Mid-session, Greenberg reportedly said Gates would not answer questions about his affairs unless directly tied to Epstein.

The paper trail complicates the "voluntary" part.

In February, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) formally asked Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to subpoena Gates and compel him to testify under oath.

Comer sent Gates a formal written request in March stating the committee believed he had "information that will assist in its investigation." Before the session on Wednesday, Comer told reporters, "No one's accusing Bill Gates of any wrongdoing."

RELATED: Nancy Mace crashes and burns in South Carolina governor primary

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In his prepared opening statement, Gates expressed regret but denied having extensive knowledge about Epstein's criminal behavior.

"I recall being aware that Epstein had faced prior legal issues, but I did not fully understand the extent of the crimes he committed,” he admitted. “I accepted the introduction without applying the scrutiny I should have."

He also denied ever visiting Epstein's island, ranch, or Florida home.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and served jail time as a registered sex offender. Gates claimed he began meeting with Epstein in 2011 over a pitch to unlock billions in global health donations.

By December 2014, Gates said he had cut off contact, concluding Epstein "would never deliver on his promises."

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) said she directly asked Gates why he continued to associate with a registered sex offender. Gates told her that "getting billions of dollars for global health was worth it,” she said.

After Gates allegedly cut ties in 2014, a departing employee engaged Epstein to negotiate the "separation" — Epstein, Gates claimed, used that channel to learn of his infidelities and pressure him to re-engage.

RELATED: Thomas Massie’s viral Epstein poll reveals stunning top belief: He lives

Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called the questioning "intense" but said Gates was "well coached" and that he didn't expect much new information to surface.

Burchett also broke with GOP leadership over the closed-door format: "I'm big about transparency. ... Let it be wide open." He added, "I guess if you're a big deal, you can do more than the rest of us."

Gates closed his opening statement to Congress with a conditional apology: "If the time I spent with Epstein lent him any credibility, I am deeply sorry."

He left without answering a single question from reporters.

Democrats have repeatedly called for Trump to testify — a push Republicans have so far blocked. But the White House may not be able to stay out of it much longer.

Per Stansbury, Republicans have agreed to call acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump's former lawyer — to testify about White House Epstein strategy sessions.

Comer also announced plans for a transcribed interview with Alan Dershowitz, who negotiated Epstein's 2008 plea deal.

A full transcript is expected in the coming days.

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Prominent Nick Kristof Donor Bill Gates Questioned By Congress Over Yearslong Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein

Bill Gates, a prominent donor to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's failed campaign for Oregon governor, faced congressional questioning this week over his longstanding relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. 

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Jeff Bezos blames government policy — not billionaires — for America’s economic problems



In a recent interview, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pushed back against claims that taxing billionaires more would meaningfully improve life for working Americans, arguing that even dramatically increasing his tax burden would do little to solve inflation or lower costs for families.

“People sometimes say that, you know, I don’t pay taxes. That’s not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes ... if people want me to pay more billions, then let’s have that debate, but don’t pretend that that’s going to solve the problem,” Bezos said.

“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. You can’t connect those two things. Not logically,” he added.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray couldn’t agree with Bezos more, pointing out that he also “bleeds terribly” during tax season — but the government largely just wastes his money.


“And so, what happens is you could double that, or you could triple it, or you could quadruple it. It’s still going to the government, and they’re still wasting it on crap,” he adds.

But Bezos wasn’t done, taking on high rent costs as well.

“I recently saw somebody blame it on Airbnb. OK, Airbnb is not the cause of expensive rent ... it’s already been outlawed in New York City and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn’t causing high rents,” he said.

“What’s really causing high rent is government intervention. We subsidize demand with things like tax policy, which is fine, but at the same time, we constrain supply. We constrain supply with things like zoning and permitting. Why does it take so long to get something permitted to build?” he continued.

“If you want rents to come down, econ 101, really simple,” he said, explaining that you can’t subsidize demand and constrain supply.

“If you do, prices are going to skyrocket. But this is not anybody’s fault other than government policy. And this is fixable. Again, this is a skills issue,” he added.

“We should put together an economic commission. Featuring Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, you probably want to avoid Bill Gates,” Gray comments.

“But you know, get these guys together who know how to be successful and understand economics and help us craft a makes-sense tax policy in this country where you’re not just pounding people who are successful,” he adds.

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'GOOD RIDDANCE': Trump dunks on climate alarmists over ridiculous doomsday scenario



President Donald Trump mocked climate alarmists on Saturday after another one of their doomsday scenarios was shown to be utter nonsense.

The admission by scientists that prompted Trump's derision is but the latest in a long series of embarrassments for those activists keen to use climate prophecies as an excuse to socially engineer human beings and regulate society.

Narrative collapse

The imagined threat of anthropogenic climate change has driven numerous public officials, scientists, and impressionable people bonkers in recent decades.

While Western politicians sacrificed energy security and hobbled industry in hopes of slowing natural phenomena and defeating the arch-villain carbon dioxide (plant food), similarly minded scientists proposed blotting out the sun; "culling" the emission-generating human population with a deadly pandemic; reducing or eliminating meat consumption; putting the population on a diet of bugs, weeds, and micro-algae; and having fewer children.

'Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs.'

This madness has been driven and exacerbated in large part by bogus claims and laughably wrong predictions. In most cases, all that's required to debunk such claims is time and a functional set of eyes.

Failed Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, for instance, said at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 that new research indicated there was "a 75% chance that the entire North Polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

Just as Gore was wrong about a 20-foot rise in the global sea level "in the near future," polar bear drownings, and the snows of Kilimanjaro, he was wrong about the future of Arctic ice.

A paper published late last year in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters concluded that over the past 20 years, "Arctic sea ice loss has slowed considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005."

RELATED: Bizarre academic paper about releasing ticks resurfaces amid surging bites

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images

If, perhaps, Gore confused the Arctic with the Antarctic, he'd still be wrong. Antarctica has enjoyed a massive gain in ice mass — at a rate of 119 billion tons per year from 2021 to 2023.

Polar ice is hardly the only planetary feature alarmists mistakenly suggested would fall victim to climate change.

Alarmists suggested in a 2017 study and elsewhere that climate change posed an existential threat to the world's coral reefs and that "immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs."

While dutifully claiming that "climate change mitigation" was still essential, researchers admitted in 2024 that "widespread and diverse coral species all exhibit the potential to adapt to the changing climate."

Former Jeffrey Epstein associate Bill Gates is one of the few alarmists to admit to having pie on his face.

Gates alleged in a 2021 work of climate alarmist agitprop that if humanity failed to eliminate so-called greenhouse gas emissions, "climate change will keep getting worse, and the impact on humans will in all likelihood be catastrophic."

After years of fear-mongering, he apparently felt compelled to admit that he too had gotten it wrong.

Gates noted in October that the "doomsday view of climate change" that says "cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization" and that "nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature" is wrong.

UN wrong, again

The United Nations, like Gates a longtime proponent of climate hysteria, was recently confronted with evidence that it too is wrong.

The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project, an outfit led by a committee of top climate scientists, admitted in a study published last month in the journal Geoscientific Model Development that the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case future emissions scenarios are "implausible based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends."

Taking into account the world's future population, emission trends, energy sources, climate policies, and other factors, researchers have cooked up various climate scenarios for use in scientific modeling and activist propaganda.

In the early 2010s, such researchers developed a set of four scenarios for climate modeling, called "representative concentration pathways" or RCPs. The most extreme of these was RCP8.5.

The number 8.5 here signals the level of radiative forcing — the extra heat supposedly trapped in the Earth's system, expressed in watts per square meter — projected by the year 2100.

The IPCC projected in 2013 that under this scenario, there would be a temperature rise of 4.3°C by 2081-2100 when compared to the pre-industrial period.

Government of Canada

RCP8.5's successor, "shared socioeconomic pathway"-8.5, projected warming of 4.4°C by 2081-2100, with a "very likely" range of 3.3°C to 5.7°C, the Carbon Brief reported.

It was all nonsense.

Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted, "The four scenarios were never apples-to-apples. They were four different fruits from four different trees. Yet, over more than a decade and in tens of thousands of papers, RCP8.5 was treated as where the world was headed and the other three scenarios — but especially RCP4.5 and 2.6 — as a world with climate policy interventions."

Despite numerous scientists stressing that the alarmist scenario was not only unlikely but misleading, the RCP8.5 scenario "came to dominate the literature to a degree that is impossible to overstate," Pielke said.

"RCP8.5 accounted for more than half of all RCP references in the 2018 U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment, nearly 60 percent in the IPCC’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere, and about a third of all RCP references in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report," Pielke wrote. "By early 2020, researchers were publishing studies invoking RCP8.5 at a rate of roughly 20 per day. So far in 2026, studies using RCP8.5 (or its even more extreme successor, SSP5-8.5) are being published at a rate of ~30 new studies per day."

Now, the scientific community must contend with the acknowledgment that this scenario is bogus.

Science journalist Maarten Keulemans noted in a post that has been translated from its original Dutch, "The IPCC acknowledges what has been circulating for a long time: The highest disaster scenario, 8.5, no longer aligns with reality. WHAT CONSEQUENCES this has. ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU READ ABOUT CLIMATE FUTURE IS WRONG."

Keuleman suggested further that this admission effectively torpedoes claims that global surface temperature will increase 4-5°C by 2100; summers will all hit 104°F and agriculture in Western Europe will be unsustainable by century's end; tuna, swordfish, and other marine creatures will go extinct; there will be millions of climate refugees every year; and that there will be no more Winter Olympics by 2040.

Trump similarly weighed in, stating, "GOOD RIDDANCE! After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that 'Climate Change' is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!"

"For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs," the president continued. "Unlike the Dumocrats, who use Climate Alarmism nonsense to push their GREEN NEW SCAM, my Administration will always be based on TRUTH, SCIENCE, and FACT!"

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'Speaking of stupid Democrats': AOC blasts billionaires and founding fathers in ridiculous podcast appearance



In a recent podcast appearance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made some shocking comments regarding billionaires and the founders of our country — and BlazeTV host Pat Gray is not surprised.

“Speaking of stupid Democrats, holy cow,” Gray says, playing a clip of AOC.

“There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned, right? You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that,” the congresswoman said on “It’s Open with Ilana Glazer.”

“You can get market power, you can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth,” she continued.


“Since you didn’t earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it,” she added.

AOC went on to claim that “there are very few real archetypes” of “what America is all about.”

“I think about the civil rights and voting rights movement and how black Americans really created democracy in this country,” she said.

"White Americans have to be eliminated from every aspect of this society,” Gray comments, shocked.

“Anything good that happened in America didn’t come from white people. They’re all evil and bad, and they have oppressed and murdered their way to prominence,” he adds.

“You’re familiar with the father of our country, right?” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in, showing a photo of George Washington that’s been updated by activists to have darker skin.

“George Washington, Black Lives Matter,” he adds, laughing.

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Bill Gates' world continues to unravel with Epstein probe, foundation layoffs



The Epstein files may have largely disappeared from the 24-hour news cycle on this side of the Atlantic, but the damning revelations they contain nevertheless continue to haunt former associates of the dead pedophile, especially Microsoft co-founder and vaccine champion Bill Gates.

While maintaining that he "did nothing illicit," Gates reportedly apologized to staff of the Gates Foundation at a town hall in February, acknowledging the negative impact that his ties — developed after Epstein's conviction in 2008 for soliciting sex from minor girls — have had on the organization and stressing that it was a "huge mistake to spend time with Epstein."

"Our work is very reputational sensitive," said the billionaire. "I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us."

'He is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions.'

It appears the scandal-stunted organization has itself chosen to work with fewer people.

According to an internal email reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Gates Foundation is poised to cut about 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. The foundation reportedly plans to reduce its current headcount of 2,375 by 200 by the end of next year.

"This is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now," Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman reportedly said in the letter.

RELATED: Epstein kept a detailed Google Calendar — and you can read all of his appointments

Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

The foundation teased these layoffs earlier this year in a release detailing how the organization was planning to cap annual operating expenditures at $1.25 billion, roughly 14% of the foundation's total budget.

In addition to slimming down, the Gates Foundation — which is set to shutter in December 2045 — is presently undergoing a desperate PR rehab.

The organization announced on Tuesday that it has "commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships."

The foundation noted further that this review is underway and an update is expected this summer.

In addition to facing scrutiny from investigators tasked by his own organization, Gates is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee for a transcribed interview on June 10.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) noted in a March 3 letter to Gates that the committee is reviewing:

the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, (ii) the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein's death, (iii) the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, (iv) ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and (v) potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Comer said that the committee suspects Gates has information that will help with this investigation.

A spokesman for Gates told Politico, "While he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work."

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Bill Gates’ double affair admission: Glenn Beck says he could be the first American jailed over Epstein — here’s why



Following the Department of Justice’s third and largest Epstein file dump, Bill Gates admitted to having two affairs — one with a Russian bridge player and another with a Russian nuclear physicist.

These confessions might land the tech billionaire in hotter water than the kind that results from typical cheating scandals, Glenn Beck says.

“This is not about infidelity,” he says, but rather about a potential “honeypot operation.”

Gates’ unfaithfulness is neither a “private” nor a “personal” matter, Glenn says, because the bridge player, Mila Antonova, whom Gates admitted to having an affair with, “was financially assisted by Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes.”

“According to the DOJ released emails, Epstein attempted to use that relationship to pressure Bill Gates. That’s not gossip. That’s leverage,” he explains.

But there’s another layer that paints an even more compelling picture: “Antonova, the Russian bridge player, she was photographed with Anna Chapman,” who was “part of a Russian spy ring that was rolled up by the FBI in 2010,” Glenn says, adding that Chapman is “the daughter of a former KGB officer [and] deported intelligence asset.”

The suggestion that these two women are “hanging out” sounds both “dangerous and strategic,” he argues.

“Because Bill Gates is not just one of the wealthiest men in the world. His foundation influences global health policy. ... His technology platforms, even worse, are embedded in our government systems. He has real relationships tied to military and federal contracts,” Glenn declares. “He’s not a private citizen. He is a national security interest and risk.”

He then paints a hypothetical but chilling picture: “A wealthy American titan in a compromising relationship with a foreign national, facilitated or financially entangled by a convicted blackmailer with global connections.”

He asks pointedly: “If you were running an intelligence service in Russia, what would you call that? I would call that a honeypot operation.”

“If you were looking for leverage over someone with global vaccine influence, agricultural control, networks, data, infrastructure access, advisory roles across all kinds of administrations (his systems are tied into our Pentagon and everything else), you don’t need proof of wrongdoing. You’d only need the threat of exposure,” he adds.

“This is the convergence of Russian nationals, Epstein leverage attempts, ... known intelligence-linked figures, government and military influence, and financial entanglement. That’s a very wicked brew.”

While none of this suggests that Gates is guilty of “espionage” or was “knowingly part a foreign plot,” it does suggest something else, Glenn says: “He was in the position where someone could apply pressure.”

Given Gates’ connections to government, military, the Pentagon, and AI development, the mere possibility that he was susceptible to foreign manipulation could be cause for prosecution, Glenn suggests.

Since similar scandals have already rocked powerful people in Europe and elsewhere, he wonders if accountability is finally “coming home to America,” where thus far, no elites have faced criminal charges or prosecution for ties to Epstein.

Will Gates be the first?

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

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'The mistake I made': Bill Gates reportedly admits to affairs with Russians, apologizes for Epstein fallout



The Epstein files released by the Department of Justice last month painted Microsoft co-founder and vaccine champion Bill Gates in a particularly unfavorable light.

Amid uproar over her ex-husband's repeat mention in the files — including in a 2013 email wherein Jeffrey Epstein alleged that he procured for Bill Gates "drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls" — Melinda French Gates told NPR's "Wild Card" podcast, "It's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage."

'Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse.'

While French Gates indicated that she has "been able to move on in life," her ex-husband is alternatively still dealing with the consequences of his long-standing association with the notorious child sex offender.

Gates reportedly apologized to the staff of the Gates Foundation for the fallout of his Epstein ties during a town hall on Tuesday, stating, "It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein," according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Gates, who has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein's victims and whose spokesperson characterized the claims in the 2013 email as "completely false," reportedly stressed, "I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit."

The billionaire reportedly had an explanation for the photographs in the files featuring him in the company of women whose faces are redacted. Epstein asked to take pictures of his assistants with Gates after meetings, Gates claimed, according to the Journal.

RELATED: Epstein-friendly lesbians managing fraud-plagued Manhattan club in hot water — again

Photo by Leon Neal - WPA Pool /Getty Images

"To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him," said Gates, according to the Journal. He noted, however, that he "did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities."

Gates reportedly suggested further that despite his ex-wife expressing concerns about Epstein in 2013 — five years after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor for prostitution — Gates continued meeting with Epstein.

"Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior," Gates reportedly told staff.

Gates, apparently recognizing that his relationship with Epstein helped boost Epstein's reputation, reportedly apologized "to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake I made."

Gates also recognized the negative impact his Epstein ties have had on the organization previously known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which became the Gates Foundation last year following the couple's divorce and previous revelations about Bill's ties to Epstein.

"It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation," said Gates, who has directly and through his foundation worked to shape public health, the news landscape, education policy, AI, American farmland, the energy sector, foreign policy, and the Earth itself.

"And our work is very reputational sensitive," continued the billionaire. "I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us."

When asked about the recording and Gates' remarks, the Gates Foundation told Blaze News in a statement, "This was a scheduled townhall with employees, which Bill does twice a year. In the conversation, Bill answered questions submitted by foundation staff on a range of issues, including the release of the Epstein files, the foundation's work in AI, and the future of global health."

The foundation added, "In the townhall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions."

"The harm Epstein inflicted on women and girls was horrific, and no one should ever have to experience what they did," the foundation said in a statement earlier this month. "The foundation regrets having any employees interact with Epstein in any way."

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