Warren Buffett says he has cut off fellow mega billionaire Bill Gates after his “whole thing” with disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was revealed.
Buffett, 95, and Gates, 70, have shared a decades-long friendship that has often been mutually beneficial financially, but the former Berkshire Hathaway chairman says their relationship is on hold, at least for now.
“I haven’t talked to him at all since the whole thing was unveiled,” Buffett told CNBC. “I don’t want to be in a position where I know things…to be called as a witness.”
“I don’t want to be under oath,” Buffett added.
Buffett has donated more than $43 billion to the Gates Foundation since 2006. However, Buffett had no words of support for his longtime pal when asked by CNBC on Tuesday whether they were still good friends.
Buffett, who Forbes estimates is worth $141 billion, answered that it didn’t make “sense to do a lot of talking” until “it gets cleared up.” Gates, who has denied any criminal wrongdoing in association with Epstein, is not under investigation.
Gates, worth an estimated $103 billion, has described Buffett as a mentor and a “friend for the ages.” In 2010, the pair co-founded The Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable organizations.
Buffett noted to CNBC that he read the 2003 Vanity Fair article that first exposed Epstein as being a fraud and a “mysterious person that everyone was scared to death of,” but allegations of his sexual misconduct were edited out of the final edition of the piece.
Gates has been under intense scrutiny after seedy details about his relationship with Epstein, including his affairs with Russian women while he was still married to Melinda French Gates, came to light in the trove of documents released by the Department of Justice.
The Microsoft co-founder has said he met Epstein in 2011, three years after Epstein was handed a “sweetheart deal” for sex crimes in Florida.
The two shared “a number of dinners” over the next three years. He claims he only spent time with Epstein to raise donations for philanthropic causes—but photos stashed by the disgraced financier show they spent considerable time together, to the point where French Gates said the men’s relationship was a factor in their divorce.
Gates has since admitted that his association with Epstein was a “huge mistake.”
“You know, in retrospect, that was a dead end, and I’ve said many times, but I’ll say it again: I was foolish to spend time with him,” he said. “I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.”
Earlier this month, Gates agreed to appear before the House Oversight Committee about his dealings with the sexual predator.
Buffett said it was “astounding” to him that “anyone could be that successful as a con man,” referring to Epstein’s ability to build a relationship with such powerful people, despite not having a college degree and being born into a middle-class family in Brooklyn.
Still, the Silent Generation billionaire—the 11th richest man in the world—had a theory.
“Men are going to like sex,” he told CNBC, “and some of them are going to like not paying taxes, and he figured out their weaknesses.”
Buffett added, “That guy must have been the con man of all time. He had a way of conning everybody.”
Buffett noted that Gates could have facilitated a meeting between himself and Epstein, but expressed gratitude that he did not.
“I got him to thank for not doing that,” Buffett said. “But you can’t get away from what happened either.”
