According to the Epstein documents recently released by the Department of Justice, on April 6, 2013, three months before the public filing, Epstein emailed Sinofsky a copy of Sinofsky’s own “Resignation Agreement,” asking for comments. After some back and forth about the non-disparagement clause, Epstein wrote: “[SEC] disclosure will appear as if they are concerned about what you say. seems very weak. appears they are buying your silence.”
“I agree,” Sinofsky replied. “Thank you.”
Epstein—at that point a financier who’d pled guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution and had registered as a sex offender—had been talking with Sinofsky about his departure for months. On April 3, 2013, he asked for a sizable sum to handle Sinofsky’s exit package directly: “I will charge you a one million dollar fee,” Epstein wrote in an email to Sinofsky, after earlier writing that he was upset with the Microsoft executive’s seeming ingratitude for his help.
“I will play any role you choose, except for the villain,” he said. He told Sinofsky that the Microsoft executive was too close to the story, too consumed by the gossip around his departure, to see clearly. “I will take total control and leave you out if that’s what you prefer,” Epstein wrote.
Epstein ended up playing the role of head negotiator for Sinofsky, working alongside Sinofsky’s lawyer Jay Lefkowitz. (Lefkowitz also negotiated Epstein’s 2008 plea deal, and he appears in recent DOJ files to have solicited Epstein’s help chartering a helicopter for a personal trip). Both Lefkowitz and a colleague at the law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, Scott Price, copied Epstein on emails throughout the process, trading messages on the language and terms of Sinofsky’s exit package.
Sinofsky, Lefkowitz and Price have not been charged with wrongdoing. Lefkowitz declined Fortune’s request to comment for this story, and Price did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Sinofsky ultimately signed a $14 million exit deal with Microsoft. On Sept. 16, 2013, Epstein received a forwarded email with the subject line “Sinofsky”: in the body it said: “Wire is completed.” The next morning, Epstein’s accountant confirmed: “Wire hit JPM yesterday… Confirming $1,000,000.”
Sinofsky declined Fortune’s request to comment for this story. He is currently listed as a board partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Microsoft also declined to comment.
How a convicted sex offender became a seven-figure negotiator for Microsoft’s No. 2 executive is, ultimately, a story of how Epstein bore his way into the inner circle of Bill Gates, then one of the richest men in the world. Newly released Justice Department documents show that when Epstein couldn’t communicate directly with the billionaire, he gained access through intermediaries, of which Sinofsky was only one. It’s a tactic Epstein seemed to employ to cozy up to other powerful figures, like Elon Musk.
Sinofsky gave Epstein information on Gates’ business matters, his thought processes, and other characters in Gates’ world, the DOJ documents show. Epstein received similar intel and other forms of leverage from additional proxies: Melanie Walker, Sinofsky’s longtime partner and a Gates Foundation senior adviser and neurosurgeon; Boris Nikolic, Gates’ chief science adviser, who involved Epstein in his own employment dispute with Gates in 2013; and Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player whom Gates reportedly had a relationship with around 2010 and to whom Epstein bestowed gifts and accommodations before using the favors to try to blackmail Gates, the DOJ documents show.
Epstein helped manage crises that left him knowing more than he had before. DOJ documents show that the campaign began around 2010, when Epstein asked people in Gates’ circle about getting him to events, and stretched to as late as 2019. Gates has characterized his relationship with Epstein as one focused on philanthropy and as a “mistake” he walked away from around 2014, according to Wall Street Journal reporting.
What Epstein was ultimately after, the DOJ documents suggest, was a “donor-advised fund”—a charitable vehicle through which Gates would help manage the wealth of newly-minted billionaires. Epstein, the documents show, thought he and other donors could profit from the fund’s fees by reducing their taxes. Epstein had been pushing the idea since at least 2011, the DOJ emails show, and for a time Gates was supportive, even offering to talk about it at a dinner that Ray Dalio and Paul Tudor Jones were expected to attend. But the project stalled, and as the years wore on and Gates stopped engaging directly, Epstein’s tone shifted from pitch to pressure to what appears to be a blackmail attempt. That escalation—and where it led—would play out through the network of intermediaries Epstein had spent years cultivating.
“As Gates has said consistently, he regrets meeting with Epstein. The files show just how extensively Epstein worked to insert himself into Gates’s life—both directly and through others in Gates’s orbit—and how Epstein continued in these efforts even after Gates stopped meeting and communicating with him,” a spokesperson for Bill Gates wrote to Fortune. “To be clear, Gates never witnessed or engaged in any illicit or illegal behavior.”
‘I’ve told Jeffrey everything’: A Gates Foundation insider turns hostile
Epstein’s ties to Sinofsky, in part, grew out of Epstein’s first Gates proxy: Melanie Walker, Sinofsky’s longtime partner. She met Epstein in the early ’90s when she was 23; Donald Trump introduced them at the Plaza Hotel, she wrote in an email included in the DOJ files. Epstein took her under his wing, and by 1998 had reportedly hired her as his science advisor, according to Rolling Stone. Over the next two decades, Walker built an extraordinary résumé—director at the Gates Foundation, advisor at the World Health Organization, and a director at the World Bank—while staying in close touch with Epstein. She is currently listed as a clinical professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington.
In most of the documents, Melanie Walker’s name has been redacted. However, the redactions are imperfect and in some cases her identity can be inferred from the use of her initials, her Medical Doctor qualification, and the way the content of the messages refers to her career and her partner. In addition, Walker has been identified as the author by Wired, Forbes, and The Telegraph. In her correspondence, context shows that Walker uses “BG” and “Bill” as shorthand references to Gates.
In the hundreds of emails and messages she exchanges with Epstein, Walker treats the financier as a confidant, divulging details about her work and her personal life.
In an email from July 28, 2011, more than a year before Sinofsky left Microsoft, Walker relayed intel about Microsoft’s leadership turmoil to Epstein. She told him Gates was considering returning to run the company himself and that Gates believed Sinofsky was “too mean to be a CEO.” She pleaded with Epstein not to repeat the information: “I just don’t want this spread around via me.”
Through her lawyers, Walker declined to comment for this story. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
In a Jan. 27, 2017 iMessage exchange, she reported back to Epstein about meetings Gates had scheduled in Washington. Epstein offered up his rapid-fire assessments of the new Trump administration, adding that Gates is “free to call me for inside baseball.”
That same day, Walker said she would spend hours with Gates. She later sent Epstein a numbered debrief and relayed an apparent message from the billionaire: Gates said hello. He wished he could “engage more and would love insider baseball,” Walker wrote, but any contact Gates has with Epstein “has to be through trusted third party as he is watched very closely.”
Gates, she added, “loves” Epstein. Walker volunteered to bridge the gap herself. “Maybe when we are together we can call you,” she texted.
The obstacle, she explained, was Melinda Gates. Bill wanted to speak with Epstein, Walker wrote in her messages to him, but his wife would not allow it. (Bill Gates, according to the WSJ, recently told his employees that he credits Melinda for being “always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing.”)
A spokesperson for Melinda French Gates said in a statement that French Gates “met Epstein only once and made it clear that she wanted nothing further to do with him.”
“Following her divorce, she has tried to put these difficult and painful matters behind her, even as more information of which she was unaware is released,” the statement says.
Epstein asked whether Walker had slept with Gates, using cruder language. Walker replied no, explaining that Gates’ staff had remained nearby throughout the meeting. “Members of his henchman team hovered outside the door for the full few hours,” she wrote.
Gates, she added, joked that he was getting too old. Walker teased back that he was “still a little too young” for her, that he needed to be 65. “Great,” Gates replied, according to her message, “you have 4 years to train me.”
Within weeks of the Washington trip, Walker’s position at the Gates Foundation began to unravel; from the emails, it’s not clear why. On this separation too, Epstein was an advisor.
On Feb. 24, Walker texted Epstein at 4 a.m. to say Melinda Gates was personally managing her separation from the foundation after more than a decade. “She has been trying for years,” Walker wrote.
Bill Gates had tried to give Walker a soft landing that consisted of working with him at bgc3, his private office, for six months, according to Walker’s texts. Melinda Gates had warned that if Walker “rock[ed] the boat,” the bgc3 arrangement would get “more difficult,” Walker told Epstein.
Epstein’s assessment: “Not good but clever.”
“That’s why I want out so bad,” Walker replied.
The relationship between Walker and Gates seemed to grow more volatile as the negotiations wore on. On July 17, 2017, Walker told Epstein she felt “so trapped” by Gates. “BG has been a huge distraction,” she wrote. “He’s very gross you have no idea. Not the person ppl think.” Epstein replied: “I know, believe me.”
On Sept. 28, 2017, the night before a meeting with Gates at bgc3, Walker asked Epstein for help: “Are there any signals I can send or words I can use to let [Larry Cohen] and BG know I’m not messing around?”
Epstein advised her to use their relationship as leverage: “With bg. All you would have to say, is you should know that I’ve told jeffrey everything—everything.”
Walker replied: “I am worried he will immediately retaliate against me.” Epstein said, “You can always say I also like blue dresses :).” The text exchange includes no other information about blue dresses, which seems to refer to Monica Lewinsky’s unwashed blue dress containing President Bill Clinton’s DNA, which helped prove their affair.
In an email six weeks later, Walker said had what she called “‘blue dress’ emails,” using the same language as Epstein. “I guess I could always auction his body fluids on eBay,” she wrote. But she couldn’t see a way forward. “The legal system may provide justice for me but the exposure will be gross.” Epstein urged her to fight: “your future reputation is in your hands. I will help all I can, but if you prefer to just slink off its your life.”
In the end, Walker appears to have worked at bgc3, at least for a time. In her World Economic Forum bio, Walker is listed as a former neurotechnology and brain science adviser to William H Gates III at bgC3.
In comments Gates made to his staff earlier this month, according to the WSJ, Gates admitted to having two affairs with Russian women but said he had never done anything “illicit” and regretted his time with Epstein.
Around the same time, another Gates confidante was leaving the Gates Foundation and Epstein had a hand in his departure too.
Boris Nikolic had been one of the most trusted people in Bill Gates’ life. Nikolic served as Gates’ chief science adviser, working across the foundation’s global health portfolio and Gates’ private investment office, bgC3. In emails released by the DOJ, Boris called Gates his “best friend,” and was described by others who knew him as Gates “right arm.”
