Melanie Walker

Melanie Walker is among the small group of close Epstein associates who, like Boris Nikolic, haven't been tainted by him and continue in the financial and philanthropic upper crust. Her current official thumbnail reads:

MD clinically specialized in Endovascular Neurosurgery and Vascular Neurology, with post-doctoral studies in computational neuroscience. Formerly: Neurotechnology and brain science adviser to William H Gates III at bgC3; Director, World Bank Group; Deputy Director for Global Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Adviser for Macroeconomics and Health, World Health Organization; practitioner in the developing world. Currently: Rockefeller Fellow and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine. Author of numerous peer reviewed publications. Member, Executive Board, American Medical Association Foundation. Young Global Leader and co-chair for the Global Future Council on Neurotechnology and Brain Science, World Economic Forum.

There's no mentioni of Epstein. Nevertheless, she turns up at several times in the Epstein story, according to numerous sources. The UK Daily Mail says,

Dr Walker is said to have met Epstein in 1992, six months after graduating from the University of Texas. He told her he could get her an audition to model for the lingerie firm Victoria's Secret.

The company was owned by fashion magnate Les Wexner, for whom Epstein acted as financial adviser. Dr Walker moved into one of Epstein's New York apartments. In 1999, she began to appear as a passenger on his pilot's flight logs.

It's worth pointing out that in 1992, Epstein was in fact beginning his relationship with Wexner, but he was also deeply involved in the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme, which turned out to be the biggest in history until Bernie Madoff. Epstein worked behind the scenes at Towers Financial beginning in 1987 and is credited with being the brains behind the fraud. According to the Wikipedia link above,

In February 1993, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged that the company, while fraudulently reporting a profit of $13 million ($25,000,000 in current dollar terms) for the four years ended June 30, 1991, actually lost $137 million ($260,000,000 in current dollar terms). In March 1993, Towers Financial filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Nevertheless, although Epstein was apparently a co-conspirator with the other organizers, who went to prison for various terms, Epstein escaped any penalty. What did Dr Walker, whom I suspect was no ingenue, know? In any case, she appears to have continued her association with Epstein through her time in medical school. Again from the UK Daily Mail link,

That same year [1999], having graduated from medical school, she took up a new role as Epstein's science adviser.

She would later join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and became an intermediary between Epstein and the Microsoft co-founder.

But at the turn of the century Dr Walker, then 28 years old, seems to have been an important pivot in the tycoon's burgeoning relationship with the Duke [Prince Andrew].

In June 2000, the neurosurgeon attended — according to the guest list — the 'Dance of the Decades' party thrown at Windsor Castle by the Queen to mark a number of royal birthday milestones, including the Duke's 40th and Princess Anne's 50th.

I have several questions. What need did Epstein, a cheesy pimp, con man, embezzler, and blackmailer, have for a "science adviser"? One would think that a qualified science type, hired off the street, would discover fairly quickly that the job was without meaningful duties and move on as quietly and tactfully as could be done. Yet Walker not only stayed with it, but she got on board the Lolita Express. Why on earth would an MD. who of anyone must be familiar with the whole range of sexual infections, step into an environment like that in anything but a hazmat suit? Some science adviser.

But it gets stranger. According to the UK Sun,

[Prince] Andrew first met Texas-born Melanie in New York in 1999 — the same year he met Epstein. The brain and nervous system specialist praised the Duke in a 2003 interview.

Melanie, who lives with ex Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky, insisted they were just friends who chatted “mostly about science and medicine” and kept in touch via email.

She added: “He calls me Mel and addresses me ‘Hey Dork’ or ‘smarty pants’.” Melanie declined to comment to The Sun.

In November 2000, accordinmg to the UK Daily Mail, Walker spent several days in a guest house with Prince Andrew at Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.

The Duke was accompanied by the same senior Personal Protection Officer (PPO) who was to stay with him at Epstein's mansion in New York the following Easter.

The police inspector — the Duke's bodyguard for 15 years — kept a private Filofax diary in which he recorded his daily duties and observations. He still has that Filofax, sources say.

Using this resource, the PPO recalls that the Duke stayed in one of the guest lodges at Zorro, while he was quartered in a building near the ranch entrance.

'He knew who went in and who went out,' says a source. 'And for most of the time the only person who was there with the Duke, apart from the ranch's domestic staff, was his then girlfriend, Melanie Walker.'

Walker's relationship with Epstein and her membership in his inner circle continued past his 2008 arrest. According to the Seattle Times,

Two members of Gates’ inner circle — Boris Nikolic and Melanie Walker — were close to Epstein and at times functioned as intermediaries between the two men.

. . . Walker later met Steven Sinofsky, a senior executive at Microsoft who became president of its Windows division, and moved to Seattle to be with him. In 2006, she joined the Gates Foundation with the title of senior program officer.

At the foundation, Walker met and befriended Nikolic, a native of what is now Croatia and a former fellow at Harvard Medical School who was the foundation’s science adviser. Nikolic and Gates frequently traveled and socialized together.

Walker, who had remained in close touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the men became friendly.

It's hard to avoid thinking that Walker was, like Ghislaine Maxwell and Eva Andersson Dubin, one of a stable of senior women who continued as part of Epstein's inner circle and did various favors for him over many years.

My main takeaway here is that I would not allow Dr Walker to get anywhere near me with a scalpel. Come to think of it, maybe not without a hazmat suit, either.

What, Precisely, Was The Lolita Express?

According to the New York Post, a Boeing 727 belonging to one of Jeffrey Epstein's companies, which has tail number N908JE, is parked in a long-term storage area at Brunswick Golden Isles Airport in southeastern Georgia. This plane, which was given the nickname Lolita Express, was just one of four helicopters and three planes Epstein owned. Other accounts say it is in derelict condition, with engines and other parts removed.

The photo above is from the UK Sun and is purportedly of this plane, but the tail number has been retouched out.

According to the Post link, "A record of its last flight shows the plane took off from West Palm Beach, then zig-zagged above Florida before touching down at the Georgia airport more than four years ago." This suggests to me that in spite of Epstein's efforts to rehabilitate his reputation via figures like Bill Gates, his prior lifestyle before his 2008 arrest had become at least in part unsustainable. Removal of the engines suggests the airport operator has seized them to cover storage fees.

Names of people who've flown on the plane with Epstein include Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz, Kevin Spacey, Ron Burkle, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Ehud Barak, Ted Kennedy, Alec Baldwin, and Courtney Love. Prosecutors have issed subpoenas for the full flight logs.

Possibly out of delicacy, most accounts of the plane suggest it was nothing but a luxurious corporate jet. However, accounts from the underage girls forced to work on the plane, both in the media and in depositions, indicate that it was used extensively for in-flight orgies. The Post link carries this description of the interior:

James McCloskey, a 53-year-old aviation consultant, told The Post he was given a tour of the jet in March 2020 while doing work for Scroggins Aviation, a Las Vegas-based company that buys planes — and plane parts — for the film industry.

McCloskey snapped more than two dozen photos of the plane’s interior, revealing the VIP jet’s velour-upholstered reclining chairs, love seats and even the pedophile’s notorious on-board bed, where he and his guests allegedly had group sex with girls.

He said the plane felt like a “playground.”

“When you get inside the aircraft, it’s a playground. Everything lays out to be a bed. That was kind of creepy,” McCloskey said.

“It’s not like the aircraft is set up for a business meeting — because it’s not. There’s no chairs for anyone to sit in, except for the lie-flat chairs.”

He added that the interior design looked like something from the Disco Era.

“You get on Epstein’s airplane and it’s decorated from the 1970s. I mean, you would almost think that Elvis flew on this thing because it’s like velour, and bright red colors,” he said.

. . . Ghislaine Maxwell, who is awaiting trial on charges she procured underage girls for Epstein to abuse, allegedly took part in sexual romps aboard his planes, according to a newly unsealed deposition by Giuffre.

In the testimony, Giuffre detailed “constant orgies” at Epstein’s private Caribbean island. She added that she had sex with Maxwell all over the globe — and in the air.

“If we’re going to talk about other countries we’ve got to talk about international travel space or plane space or whatever you want to call it,” Giuffre told an attorney in 2016 when asked where she had sex with Maxwell.

“It happened all the time on the planes,” she said.

Other accounts indicate that the females on the trips included the underage girls forced into the work, older women who were more clearly professional prostitutes, and senior Epstein associates like Maxwell and Melanie Walker. Apparently not all flights were orgies -- Bill Clinton's spokespeople will acknowledge four flights with secret service on board, but flight logs indicate Clinton was on 26.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the plane was stocked with pink lotion, wet wipes, tissues with the plane's tail number on them, and baby powder. It's worth noting that the UK press has been much more explicit and comprehensive in covering the story than the US media.

Thus it's possible that some individuals named as passengers on Epstein's plane may not have participated in sexual activity with women either underage or adults, but the normal use of the plane was for sex parties, not business travel, and it's becoming more clear that Epstein made his money from pimping and blackmail, using philanthropic non-profits to launder the payments.

The plane was just one part of his operation.

Boris Nikolic

One thing I find nore and more puzzling is that, at least on the web, there's no single "who's who" of the ever-widening circle of names surrounding Epstein. (If someone knows of such a thing, I'll be very grateful to hear of it.) Today I want to look at one of the few whose association with the guy hasn't resulted in job loss or similar calamity, Boris Nikolic. He's in the far right of the well-known 2011 photo of Gates with Epstein, Larry Summers, and Jes Staley.

In the famous photo, Nikolic comes off as a thuggish-looking James Bond villain. That he's named Boris doesn't help. But in other photos, he's housebroken and sincere. Which is it? His current position app;ears to be Managing Direcor of Biomatics Capital, where his thumbnail reads,

Dr. Nikolic is a physician and investor who previously served as chief advisor for science and technology to Bill Gates, leading select for-profit and not-for-profit investment activities. His investments spanned the life science, information technology and health care sectors, including companies such as Foundation Medicine, ResearchGate, Schrodinger and Nimbus Therapeutics.

In other words, he's an unassailable member of the tech investor elite, with credentials reaching back to a professorship at Harvard. The only glitch is that, as I noted in an earlier post here, he was inexplicably named in Epstein's will as “successor executor,” the person who would take control of the estate if the two named executors are unable or unwilling to. When this came up, Nikolic simply said he was "shocked" to learn of it, and the whole thing went away. Odd.

The most complete explanation of how Nikolic fit into the Epstein circle is in this story in the UK Daily Mail.

Before ever meeting Gates, Epstein knew of two people who were in his inner circle - Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic.

Walker met Epstein just after she graduated college in 1992.

. . . Walker, who kept in touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the two became friends.

That eventually led to the first face-to-face meeting between Gates and Epstein, which took place at Epstein's New York City townhouse in January 2011, according to the Times.

The meeting is said to have included other associates of Epstein, including Eva Andersson-Dubin, the former Miss Sweden who is married to hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin.

After the hours-long meeting, Epstein wrote an email to friends saying: 'Bill's great.'

Gates also reportedly had positive things to say about Epstein.

In an email to colleagues obtained by the Times, he wrote: 'A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.'

. . . Soon afterward in May 2011, Gates paid another visit to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, according to the Times.

The Times published a photo showing Epstein, Gates, Nikolic, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and James Staley, who at the time was an executive with JPMorgan.

At the time, the Gates Foundation and JPMorgan began discussions about creating a global charity that would fund health care projects in poor countries.

So what we're seeing is an extended network that includes two Epstein girlfriends who become connected with Nikolic, who acted in this episode as a go-between who could set up meetings with Bill Gates.

He sure seems proud of himself in the photo from the 2011 meeting, huh? But from what we read in the link, Nikolic and Melanie Walker, already friends, had both infiltrated the Gates operation on Epstein's behalf before any of the problem meetings with Ep;stein took place.

Gates Thought Epstein Could Get Him The Nobel Prize

Via The Daily Beast, which broke the story:

Gates hoped the well-connected pervert could help him secure the Nobel Peace Prize, one former Gates Foundation employee told The Daily Beast.

This person said members of the foundation’s communications team were alerted to Gates’ relationship with Epstein and were told it “was a maneuver to try to get himself a Nobel Peace Prize.” They said the tech mogul had even kept some employees on call on prize day in years past just in case he was awarded the distinction.

“We were aware of things that were potential reputational risks for the foundation and the co-chairs, Bill and Melinda,” said the former employee. “Even back then, people knew this guy wasn’t squeaky clean,” the person said, referring to Epstein.

Although much of the dirt on Gates and his ties to Epstein seems to come from Melinda's allies (like the quotes above), other information suggests Melinda was copacetic with Gates's effort to get the prize via Epstein and even complicit, at least insofar as a trip to France was involved:

According to People, Bill and Melinda Gates will continue as co-chairs of their foundation, even as they divide their $130 billion in marital assets, because of their shared ambition for the Nobel Prize. One source told the magazine: “They were really interested in trying to win a Nobel Prize. So one thing that was part of this is, if it gets worse, then it ends that. It seems as if that was on the agenda, and that’s for both of them.”

Bill Gates may have had the prize on his mind in March 2013, when he and Epstein reportedly visited Jagland’s home in Strasbourg, France.

The rendezvous was revealed by Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s largest business newspaper, in an October 2020 report. At the time of the meeting, Jagland was chair of the committee which awards the Peace Prize, and Gates was a potential candidate for the honor.

The meeting also included members of the International Peace Institute (IPI)—a think tank run by former Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen that Epstein’s secret charity lavished with a $375,000 donation in 2017. (Rød-Larsen resigned from the New York-based IPI last October after it was revealed his group received $650,000 in donations from Epstein, who also provided him with a $130,000 personal loan.)

. . . The Strasbourg meeting may not have been Gates’ only visit abroad with Epstein.

In August 2019, the French news outlet Franceinfo reported on a roster of famous visitors to Epstein’s Parisian apartment, which included Bill and Melinda on at least one occasion, according to the financier’s former butler. A spokesperson for Melinda Gates told The Daily Beast that Melinda has never been to Epstein’s Paris home. >/p> The steady stream of revelations suggests the enormous range of people Epstein corrupted via blackmail or other conflict of interest. As the current crop of stories brings up new figures, one consistent feature seems to be the willingness of media worldwide to treat all these post-2019 resignations is discrete episodes that quietly fade awayu after a few stories in local media.

This new episode also raises questions about just what all those meetings between Epstein, Gates, and other members of a so-called "men's club" involved. They are said to have been frequent, and accounts make it fairly clear that they took place between at least 2011 and 2013 -- but when, exactly, did they stop? And were they just the innocent sessions for Bill to bellyache about Melinda? Donations from the Gates foundation were made, according to the Daily Beast story, to the Epstein-connected IPI well after the 2013 visit:

Not long after the Strasbourg gathering, the Gates Foundation granted IPI millions of dollars; records on the foundation’s website show IPI received a $2.5-million grant in October 2013, $5.5 million in March 2014, and $256,968 in June 2019 and July 2020.

The Gates foundation's connection with Epstein, and Gates's friendship with him, likely extended well beyond what's been revealed so far, in my view. All the denials of this, that, and the other from both Bill's and Melinda's flacks strike me as worth not much.

Melinda is a wronged woman, an innocent party. Right. I keep telling my wife that the divorce came about because Melinda started to think Epstein stole a lot more from the Gates fortune than she's been told, and the divorce is the only way to get the money straightened out by a third party, the court. My wife is starting to agree. But this goes way beyond the Gateses.

The Nymphets Are The Least Of It

The real question about Jeffrey Epstein has little to do with the Lolita Express, the private island, and the underage girls, although the prosecutions were over the nymphets alone, and the rest has been the focus of the tabloid news. But a much bigger question is how Epstein got his money in the first place, and, since there's a high likelihood that this involved fraud and blackmail, how much he stole, and maybe more important, from whom.

One potential early source of money was Les Wexner. This story in The New Republic gives details:

The founder and former chairman of L Brands, which includes stores like The Limited and Victoria’s Secret, Wexner was Epstein’s longtime friend and key enabler. A serial liar and cunning manipulator, Epstein sometimes approached women claiming to be a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. He said he was a money manager for billionaires, but Wexner was his only confirmed client. After meeting Epstein in the mid-1980s, Wexner eventually gave him power of attorney, allowing him full control over Wexner’s billions. The source of most of Epstein’s own fortune, estimated at nearly $600 million at the time of his death, remains mostly unknown, but much of it appears to have come from Wexner himself, including mansions in Ohio and New York that Wexner essentially gifted to Epstein. According to transaction records, it appears that Epstein also used his position as Wexner’s fiduciary to off-load huge chunks of Wexner-owned stock, while skimming millions for himself. (Wexner eventually disavowed Epstein, claiming he stole $46 million from him—a relatively small amount compared to the overall sum Epstein likely earned through the relationship.)

But the Wexner Manhatten mansion alone, which the story and other sources indicate was effectively "gifted" to Epstein, sold at a distress price of $51 million in March. And this leaves out the value of the other real estate Epstein somehow wangled from Wexner, plus an undetermined amount of cash. $46 million is pretty clearly a wildly lowball estimate meant to preserve both Wexner's self-esteem and his public image.

The public figures who've been suddenly named as Epstein cronies, now including Bill Gates, have all scrambled to insist that they only "discussed philanthropy", never went to the island, or whatever. Alan Dershowitz is such another:

Dershowitz admitted to being at the billionaire’s home but noted that he’d never seen an underaged girl at Epstein’s place despite sworn testimony from Epstein’s former butler who claimed that Dershowitz was at the residence at the same time that underaged girls were there. Dershowitz has an easy explanation for that: “Were there young women in another part of the house giving massages while I was around? I have no idea of that!”

Oh, and did Dershowitz ever receive a massage at Epstein’s house? Yep. But Dershowitz claimed that it was from an adult woman and he kept his underwear on.

But in 2003, before Epstein's 2008 first case, Dershowitz told Vanity Fair:

In the Vanity Fair piece, Dershowitz told the magazine, "I'm on my 20th book … The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey." In 2015, however, he relayed to The American Lawyer that he was an Epstein acquaintance, describing the relationship as "entirely professional."

Another prominent figure who's had to backtrack furiously over Epstein ties is Leon Black. According to the Financial Times,

Over two decades, Mr Black confided in Epstein regarding personal matters, leaned on him as an “architect” of, and “strict taskmaster” for, the private office that managed his investments. The men socialised or held meetings at Epstein’s Caribbean island and his other properties in New York, Paris, Florida and New Mexico.

. . .“Let me be clear, there has never been an allegation by anyone that I engaged in any wrongdoing because I did not,” Mr Black said then. “Any suggestion of blackmail or any other connection to Epstein’s reprehensible conduct is categorically untrue.”

The pair last spoke in 2018, after Epstein sent emails that made what Dechert called “unsubstantiated assertions” about the work he had performed and demanded more cash. Mr Black refused to pay anything more.

It sounds, though, as if Epstein was demanding payments over "unsubstantiated assertions". Er, isn't this blackmail?

The nymphets -- or whatever else -- were just a means to an end. We'll likely never get to the bottom of these relationships, Wexner, Dershowtiz, Black, Gates, and surely many others. But we can be fairly sure there's much beyond what they're willing to say publicly. How much Epstein stole may not be anything like the whole picture, either.

You Know What? Nothing In This Gates Narrative Fits.

The big current developmemt in the Bill Gates story, as we're expected to believe it, is that Gates left the Microsoft board as a result of a 20 year old consensual affair with a subordinate that ended amicably. There appears to be no disagreement that this affair took place, and Gates's spokespeople acknowledge it. So let's put on the brakes.

"Consensual" affairs in the workplace between superior and subordinate are common as dirt. Companies may or may not have policies governing them specifically, but in practice, they're handled on a case by case basis, with the organization usually looking the other way until it's absolutely necessary to take some action, which often as not just involves transferring one or both parties to separate them.

A "consensual" affair in and of itself is not "sexual harassment", which strictly speaking is a quid pro quo requirement that the subordinate put out or be subject to adverse action from the superior. If it's "consensual", that's not the issue. Naturally office romances occupy a huge gray area. If it's a party office, and there's a general expectation that everyone has to party to get along, that's a "hostile work environment", but you do have to prove that in court.

I'm also lukewarm at best with the Melinda-as-wronged-woman part of the narrative. She had an MBA and had worked at Microsoft for roughly seven years before she married Gates. She presumably had a clear understanding by that time about how executives act, and in fact how their subordinates sometimes act, which probably included knowing how Gates himself acted. She was 30 and no ingenue. (If I were on the marriage tribunal deciding on her annulment, those are questions I'd ask, but dei gratia, that's someone else's problem.)

The difficulty I have with the whole Gates-consensual-affair story as we hear it is that it's not clear if Gates violated any particular Microsoft policy by having it. It was not "sexual harassment" as normally understood. Whether it created a "hostile work environment" is also completely unclear. It was poor judgment 20 years in the past. But Gates nevertheless left the Microsoft board before the investigation was completed. And not only that, he resigned from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway board the same day. Wha? Is everyone else on the Berkshire Hathaway board such a total boy scout, so Gates is the odd man out and has to leave it, too?

Gates's spokespeople are now saying the affair isn't why he left the Microsoft board. This is one of the few things being said about this that I actually believe.

Let's look at the timing here and what else was going on. Here's the word from Microsoft:

“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” Microsoft said in a statement. “A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation.

So there was some problem reflecting bad personal judgment, almost certainly not a legal issue in itself nor potentially even a violation of company policy, 20 years in the past, and the Microsoft board sets up a committee and hires an outside law firm for an investigation? How much are all those partners and associates billing? And Gates leaves in the middle of said investigation, eliminating a need for a final report? Yeah, I'll go along with Gates, this had nothing to do with a flippin' consensual affair. Gates was doing that stuff throughout his career, and it was general knowledge.

Er, what else happened in "the latter half of 2019", as the board so delicately put it? Oh, that's right, Epstein was arrested in July and got suicided that August. A lot of stuff came out, much of it probably not public, in conjunmction with those events. And some montbs after that time, during a confidential investigation of something that was likely really serious, not only does our boy Gates leave the Microsoft board, but he leaves the Berkshire Hathaway board as well, the same day, even though there was never any hanky pank at Berkshire Hathaway.

And oh by the way, right about the same time, Melinda, who by all accounts was already thoroughly familiar with Gates's ways but seems to have made her accommodations, suddenly decides to hire a divorce attorney. We may assume this isn't just the divorce-injury-bankruptcy guy down the street, either.

You know what I think? I think Melinda's wondering if the putative $130 billion in the Gates fortune is actually in the bank. That's what I think. I wonder if this has also occurred to Mr Buffett.

More Comes Out On Poor Bill Gates!

I found the photo above, which is pretty well known, in a current Dsily Mail story. The caption to the photo in that story reads,

Bill Gates is pictured at Epstein's Manhattan mansion in 2011, from left: James E. Staley, at the time a senior JPMorgan executive; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; Epstein; Gates and Boris Nikolic, who was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's science adviser

It goes without saying that each of the men in that photo is deeply compromised. For instance, Boris Nikolic, identifed as the Gates foundation science adviser, seems actually to have been Epstein's man:

Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender, signed a will detailing nearly $600 million in assets just two days before he killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell. In the will, he named biotech venture capitalist Boris Nikolic as “successor executor,” the person who would take control of the estate if the two named executors are unable or unwilling to.

Nikolic, 49, said in a statement that he was “shocked” that he was included.

Shocked, shocked. The story goes on to suggest, though, that Nikolic had ongoing ties with JPMorgan, presumably via the Morgan executive in the photo. I looked up James E Staley, identified as Jes Staley on Wikipedia, who has had a career peppered with sudden resignations, questions of scandal, and conflict of interest, especially in the 2010s as he became more closely associated with Epstein. According to Wikipedia,

On October 26, 2015, the Daily Mail published an article exposing that Jeffrey Epstein had threatened the UK Parliament [clarification needed] unless it accepted his pick of Jes Staley for the role of CEO of Barclays. The Times stated that Epstein sent emails to the Treasury Select Committee, which were then leaked to the Daily Mail. Freedom of Information requests were subsequently sent to Parliament. The Treasury Select Committee has declined to put the emails into the public domain.

Staley did become CEO of Barclays, but his tenure there has been clouded. Again accourding to Wikipedia,

In February 2020 the FCA announced an investigation into whether Staley was "fit and proper" to lead Barclays, due to concerns over his previous disclosures of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Staley told Bloomberg TV that "The investigation is actually focused on transparency, and whether I was transparent and open with the bank and with the board with respect to my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein." Staley told colleagues that he expects to leave Barclays by the end of 2021 and could step down at the annual meeting in May 2021.

Recent stories stress that Epstein had already pled guilty to felony charges in connection with his activities in 2008, but he was somehow able to rehabilitate himself with at least some of the elite almost immediately -- though it's hard not to surmise that those would have been among the most corruptible. Current stories suggest the photo above with Epstein, Gates, Nikolic, and Staley was in connection with a pitch by Epstein for some kind of philanthropic fund involving JPMorgan and the Gates foundation -- but Staley left Morgan after 30 years in 2013. Was Epstein involved in Staley's career thereafter? Can't rule it out.

But of course, the most interesting guy in that photo at the moment is Gates. According to the Daily Beast, Gates began meeting with Epstein extensively at Epstein's Manhattan mansion in 2011, around the time of the photo.

Bachelor sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates advice on ending his marriage with Melinda after the Microsoft co-founder complained about her during a series of meetings at the money manager’s mansion, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Gates used the gatherings at Epstein’s $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a “toxic” marriage, a topic both men found humorous, a person who attended the meetings told The Daily Beast.

. . . The people familiar with the matter said Gates found freedom in Epstein’s lair, where he met a rotating cast of bold-faced names and discussed worldly issues in between rounds of jokes and gossip—a “men’s club” atmosphere that irritated Melinda.

So it sounds as if the photo above could just as easily have been taken in a break from one of the "men's club" sessions involving Staley and Summers as well as Gates. I would bet that a list of other regulars wouldn't be hard to develop. Clearly this relationship has been problematic for Staley, and the potential problem for Gates is reflected in a statement from Gates's spokesperson farther down in the story:

A representative for Bill Gates told The Daily Beast: “Your characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated. Similarly, any claim that Gates spoke of his marriage or Melinda in a disparaging manner is false.”

The spokesperson disputed the number of times Epstein and Gates met and said the two men never discussed Epstein getting involved with the foundation.

“Bill never received or solicited personal advice of any kind from Epstein— on marriage or anything else. Bill never complained about Melinda or his marriage to Epstein.” A representative for Melinda did not respond to a request for comment for this report.

The normal excuse for prominent figures like Bill Clinton caught hobnobbing with Epstein is that they "discussed philanthropy", and there was nothing involving underage nymphets. But Gates's attorney-flack takes it one step further -- they didn't even discuss philanthropy, and maybe the meetings didn't even take place, sort of.

Sounds to me as though Bill needs to give Melinda every penny of what she wants. But hey, stay tuned!