evidence: In August 2021, several news outlets reported that Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and a billionaire philanthropist, had acknowledged that on several occasions he had met with the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and had described those meetings as "a huge mistake." [...] ...Beginning in 2011, Mr. Gates met with Mr. Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Mr. Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by The New York Times. [...] Gates described his meetings with Epstein as a "huge mistake" during the course of an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, on Aug. 5, 2021. In it, Cooper broached the subject of Gates' high-profile divorce from his wife Melinda, which was announced in May 2021, and finalized in August. The relevant section of that interview can be watched below. The following is an excerpted transcript: