by WorldTribune Staff, February 25, 2026 Real World News
Epstein infections are spreading rapidly, and ruined reputations may be just the beginning for former members of “the club.”
The millions of pages of Epstein Files released by the U.S. Department of Justice continue to plague high-profile individuals who are now admitting closer ties to the sex trafficker than previously reported. All are innocent of any serious wrongdoing by their telling, but who believes them now?
The latest infected by the Epstein contagion are Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers, globalist billionaire Bill Gates, and former prime minister of Norway Thorbjørn Jagland.
Summers, a Harvard University economist and the school’s former president who also held top economic positions in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, will resign from teaching at the end of the academic year, a Harvard spokesman said.
The Epstein Files show a close relationship between Summers and Epstein long after Epstein was convicted of prostitution involving a minor.
The resignation of Summers comes “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government,” the spokesman, Jason Newton, said in a statement.
Emails from the Epstein Files show that Summers and Epstein spoke about Summers’s romantic interest in a woman who was not his wife. Epstein described himself as Summers’s wingman.
In 2019, Summers complained to Epstein about the woman’s involvement with someone else: “I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy,’ I said awfully coy u are.”
Epstein responded: “shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.”
In other messages, Summers referred to the woman using racist language: “I’d be happy to have a rational affair w yellow peril,” he wrote in a message to Epstein. Minutes before, Summers had written he was “way smitten with her so woukd sacrifuce lots for being w her.”
As for Gates, the Microsoft co-founder has now admitted he had affairs with two Russian women while married to his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, and issued a groveling apology for his links to Epstein.
Gates, 70, told staffers at his foundation on Tuesday that he flew on a private plane with Epstein and spent time with him in the U.S. and abroad, but insisted he didn’t participate in any crime, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said in the town hall meeting. “To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him.”
Gates first met Epstein in 2011, which was after Epstein’s Florida conviction for procuring a child for prostitution, and continued to socialize with him — seemingly ignoring concerns raised by his then-wife.
Related: Pandemics for profit: Epstein planned to get Gates ‘more money for vaccines’, February 16, 2026
“I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities,” Gates told staffers.
Epstein had threatened Gates over the affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, the Journal reported.
Epstein met Antonova while seeking financial backers for a bridge academy before he paid for her to attend software coding school.
In a July 4, 2013, email to Boris Nikolic, Gates’s chief adviser for science and technology, Epstein named two women with whom he alleged Gates had affairs.
Epstein claimed the women risked “becoming overnight sensations.”
“Bill risks going from richest man to biggest hypocrite, Melinda a laughing stock, pledges will disappear as a result,” Epstein told Nikolic.
Just weeks later, Epstein sent a “resignation” email to himself in which he seemed to be writing as Nikolic.
“During the past few weeks I have been caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill,” the email said.
The email tried to suggest Nikolic had assisted Gates in securing medication “in order to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls.”
During the town hall, Gates admitted he spent time with Epstein in New York, Germany, France, and Washington, but said he never visited his island.
As for Jagland, the former Norwegian PM reportedly attempted to commit suicide after being charged with aggravated corruption after appearing in the Epstein Files.
Reports on the Epstein disclosures suggest Jagland may have stayed at Epstein’s properties in Paris, New York, and Palm Beach while leading the Council of Europe. Jagland has denied any criminal wrongdoing and maintains that he never visited Epstein’s private island.
Officials in Norway and media outlets have spun Jagland’s suicide attempt.
He has been a hospitalized “due to the strain arising in the wake of this case,” attorney Anders Brosveet at Elden Law Firm told Bloomberg in a statement Monday.
The disclosure about Jagland’s hospitalization has triggered a debate about media transparency in Norway. iNyheter reported that Norwegian media, via the Norwegian Editors’ Association and selected editors, reached an understanding Feb. 17 with Jagland’s lawyer “that the incident would not be covered.”
Jagland, who also served as the secretary general of the Council of Europe and chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, was the central figure behind the decision to award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to then-President Barack Obama.
