Warren Buffett on Bill Gates’ ‘distasteful’ friendship with Jeffrey Epstein: ‘No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people’

Billionaire Warren Buffett said Wednesday that his decision to cut the Gates Foundation out of his charitable giving is more about believing his three kids are ready to handle giving away his entire fortune than it is about Bill Gates ‘ ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Buffett told CNBC that Gates’ association with Epstein was “distasteful,” but the 95-year-old investor suggested that Gates’ actions weren’t much different from mistakes he himself had made over the years in hiring the wrong person or in choosing friends. “No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people,” Buffett said on CNBC.

Buffett read up on Gates’ ties to Epstein Buffett said he “read a great deal since Jan. 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination.”

He noted that Gates eventually ended his relationship with Epstein. Buffett said Gates wasn’t surprised by the decision Buffett announced Tuesday to eventually donate all the rest of his $140 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to foundations associated with his family and his three children, Howard, Susie and Peter. Gates flew to Omaha a few weeks ago and spent several hours talking with Buffett.

The two hadn’t spoken much since before additional details about Gates and Epstein started to come out when the federal government began releasing files from the Epstein investigation. Gates has said that he only met with Epstein because he thought it might help him raise money for charitable causes, and he didn’t know about Epstein’s ongoing crimes. Epstein, who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, was found dead at the Manhattan federal lockup in August 2019.

His death was later ruled a suicide by New York City’s medical examiner. Buffett said in 2024 that he planned to cut off donations to the Gates Foundation after he died and let his three children decide how to distribute the rest of his fortune. In other n