Day: January 30, 2026
‘Completely false’: Bill Gates fires back after Russian prostitute-STD accusation released in Epstein files
The millions of pages from the Epstein files released on Friday include a salacious accusation against billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.
An email released by the DOJ includes claims that Gates begged Epstein to provide him with antibiotics to secretly dose his wife to conceal STDs he had contracted from “Russian girls.”
‘From helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls, to facilictating his illicit trysts, with married women.’
“During the past few weeks I have been caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill,” reads the email in Epstein’s account from July 2013.
It appears to be sent from and to Epstein’s own account as a way of documenting the claims and is reportedly written on behalf of Boris Nikolic, a science adviser to Gates.
“In my role as his right hand I had been asked on mulitple occasion[s] and in hindsight, wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate,” the email continues, “to the ethically unsound and had been repeatedly asked to do other things that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal. … From helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls, to facilictating his illicit trysts, with married women, to being asked to provide Adderall [for] bridge [tournaments].”
In another draft email, Epstein writes as Nikolic accusing Gates of coordinating a “cover up [sic] so that you can maintain the reputation that you have worked so hard to achieve.”
The email went on to say, “[You] implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std [sic], your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda, and the description of your penis.”
The Gates Foundation denied the accusations in an email statement to Blaze News.
“These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false. The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame,” said a spokesperson for Bill Gates.
Melinda Gates later divorced Bill Gates and admitted in 2022 that his relationship with Epstein was one of the reasons for the split.
“He was abhorrent, evil personified,” she said of Epstein after meeting him once. “I had nightmares about it afterwards. That’s why my heart breaks for these young women. That’s how I felt, and I am an older woman. He was awful.”
Gates has previously said that his friendship with Epstein was a “huge mistake.”
Melinda Gates went on to suggest that her billionaire ex-husband cheated on her numerous times during their 27-year marriage.
Blaze News reached out to Nikolic for comment.
The Justice Dept. released more than 3.5 million pages from the Epstein files Friday, including 180,000 images and 2,000 videos.
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Local sheriff refuses to help ICE with immigration enforcement around the Super Bowl
Santa Clara County Sheriff Bob Jonsen bizarrely pledged not to work with federal agents while claiming such non-cooperation would result in increased safety for residents.
Ahead of Super Bowl LX at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California, the local sheriff said he is refusing to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
‘We will not be working or supporting ICE immigration enforcement.’
The Trump administration has warned illegal aliens that there would still be enforcement around the Super Bowl, which takes place on February 8, but Sheriff Jonsen told residents he will not assist the Department of Homeland Security or its agents.
“We are gonna be here for you, side by side,” Jonsen said about his own officers. “So as you’re getting off those trains, … high probability you’re going to see somebody in uniform. But if they’re not masked, if they’re wearing tan and green or blue or black, trust me, they are there for your protection.”
Jonsen told reporters on Thursday that if residents or visitors see masked law enforcement who are “trying to hide their identity,” that means “somebody hasn’t communicated” with his department.
“We’ve made it very clear to our officers — our workforce is to be open, transparent, and engaged with this community for the next few weeks,” the sheriff added.
At that point, Jonsen made it clear to his constituents that his department would not be working alongside the immigration enforcement officers.
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“I urge our federal partners — if there is something that you’re planning to do in our community, please be transparent and reach out to your local officials so we can work as best we can,” Jonsen announced to federal authorities.
“As mentioned, we are not going to be changing our policies or protocols. We will not be working or supporting ICE immigration enforcement,” he added.
In October, special adviser to Homeland Security Corey Lewandowski warned illegal aliens that if they went to the Super Bowl, there would be “repercussions to that.”
He added, “Just as there are if you are in any other neighborhood in this great country.”
DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin told TMZ this week that her department is still “committed to working with” local partners to ensure safety around the Super Bowl.
“Our mission remains unchanged,” McLaughlin noted.
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Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
The Santa Clara sheriff positioned his department as wanting to protect the level of trust it has built with its community over “decades” and expressed that he wants federal authorities to communicate their plans to him so he can relay it to his city.
Jonsen urged his constituents to contact “somebody wearing a uniform” if they see ICE operations unfolding.
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Hawaii tells Supreme Court our rights should exist only with permission
Something shocking just happened between Hawaii — a state that already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation — and the Supreme Court, and Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is sounding the alarm.
In defense of a sweeping gun restriction, Hawaii argued that Americans’ rights only exist if someone else gives permission, citing “Black Codes” written to disarm freed slaves as “historical tradition.”
This means that gun owners can’t carry on private property, unless the owner explicitly allows it.
“That means your constitutional right only exists if somebody else says yes. And the judges are like, ‘I’m sorry, how are you doing the math on this one?’ And Hawaii steps up to the microphone and says, ‘Yeah, your honor, don’t worry, history supports us on this,’” Glenn says.
The initial Black Code law that Hawaii’s new law is modeled after was written after the Civil War, and it was meant to disarm newly freed slaves so they were unable to defend themselves from mobs, the clan, or corrupt authorities.
“People who normally recoil from Black Codes, you know, like garlic with a vampire, suddenly embrace them because it helps restrict guns,” Glenn explains.
“But the case isn’t really about guns,” he says. “And that’s what I think everybody who is analyzing this case is missing. It is not about guns. It’s about whether your rights exist before government or only after permission is granted.”
“Hawaii says your right exists if someone else allows it. The Constitution says no, no, your rights exist because you exist and you’re free. And the court’s being asked to answer the question, do we define American liberty by its highest principles? Or by its darkest moments?” he continues.
“And once you use poisoned history to limit rights, rights stop being rights,” he adds.
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Elderly man who falsely confessed to shooting Charlie Kirk sentenced to prison
The elderly man who was caught on video screaming, “Shoot me!” after falsely confessing to shooting Charlie Kirk has pleaded no contest to a third-degree charge of obstruction of justice.
71-year-old George Zinn added to the chaos on Sept. 10 when Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University by claiming to have been the shooter. He was dragged away while his pants slipped to his ankles.
‘I want to put the past behind me and move forward.’
After Zinn was questioned by police, they said they discovered child sex abuse material on his cell phone, which led to more charges.
On Thursday he also pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, but denied in a statement to the court that he was a threat to children.
Utah Fourth District Court Judge Thomas Low sentenced Zinn to up to 15 years for all of the charges. A parole board will ultimately decide how much time he spends in prison.
Zinn helped incite conspiracy theories about the shooting, but he was known for being a nuisance at high-profile political and cultural events in Utah. He had more than two dozen previous arrests, the most serious one involving an alleged bomb threat made to the Salt Lake City Marathon by email.
Police said that he admitted to trying to divert “the attention of multiple law enforcement officers from their efforts to secure the scene and find the actual shooter.”
22-year-old Tyler James Robinson was charged for the murder of Kirk based on a trove of evidence that included a confession note and extensive physical evidence.
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Zinn did not mention Charlie Kirk in his statement to the court asking for mercy.
“I want to put the past behind me and move forward,” he said as he became emotional.
Zinn’s defense attorney, Carly Madsen, told the court that he never fit in and didn’t get the help he needed.
“Never really got the love or attention he deserved,” she added. “And never got the help he needed, resources that would that helped him years ago.”
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‘USADF is garbage’: Senior US foreign aid official will plead guilty to taking kickbacks, lying to feds
The U.S. African Development Foundation, a foreign aid agency that poured millions of taxpayer dollars into African initiatives over the past four decades, desperately fought the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency and audit its finances.
It’s now painfully obvious why there was so much resistance to transparency at the U.S. Agency for International Development-adjacent outfit.
Months after government watchdog Judicial Watch sued the USADF for records regarding its expenditures and in the wake of allegations that agency officials were abusing their positions and misusing funds, the USADF’s director of financial management, Mathieu Zahui, is now admitting wrongdoing.
‘The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people.’
Zahui, an official who denied DOGE access to the agency’s financial records last year, has agreed to plead guilty to taking secret payments and lying to federal law enforcement officers about those payments.
“Mathieu Zahui is charged with accepting payments from a government contractor and then abusing his position by directing USADF funds to that contractor for little-to-no work,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement on Friday. “Corruption by senior officials representing the United States cheats American taxpayers and rigs the system against honest work.”
RELATED: ‘STOP THE SCAMS!’ Trump announces new office in DOJ dedicated to investigating fraud
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The Justice Department indicated in court documents obtained by Rikki Ratliff-Fellman, chief content officer for Glenn Beck, and shared with Blaze News that Zahui, 59, arranged for the USADF to pay vendors and contractors through a Kenya-based company owned by a government contractor Zahui has known since 1999.
“Zahui arranged for ADF to pay certain vendors and contractors through Company-1 rather than pay them directly,” the DOJ noted in the filing. “Zahui then approved invoices for Company-1 and CC-1 that included mark-ups ranging from 17% to 66% on these pass-through invoices, even when Company-1 did no work justifying the mark-up.”
The company belonging to Zahui’s associate submitted over 20 pass-through invoices for the African Development Foundation for which Zahui had USADF shell out at least $617,625.49. His associate’s company allegedly kept $134,886.34 of that sum as a mark-up for “logistical support.”
Between 2019 and 2022, Zahui personally and directly received $12,000 in cash payments, the DOJ alleged.
Zahui and his associate’s company unsurprisingly failed to disclose the details of their little arrangement to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which oversaw and authorized USADF’s payment to external parties.
Adding insult to injury, Zahui told federal agents when interviewed in 2024 that he had never received any kickback from his friend’s company.
The USADF financial director has, however, since agreed to plead guilty to one count of accepting gratuities from his associate’s company and one count of making a false statement to a federal law enforcement officer. He faces a maximum of two years in prison for the first charge and five years in prison for the second.
Peter Marocco, former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance and USAID deputy administrator, wrote in response to the agreement, “USADF is garbage. A culture of defiant fraud, waste and abuse that must come to an end. This is only scratching the surface. Abolish it!”
“The USADF Director of Financial Management’s fraudulent acts betrayed the trust of the American people,” said Sean Bottary, the acting assistant inspector general at the USAID’s Office of Inspector General.
Zahui’s guilty plea apparently will not be the end of the crackdown on USADF.
“There are active investigations as we dig deeper into the African Development Foundation’s egregious and systemic fraud, waste, and abuse,” Marocco told Blaze News. “After battling obstructionist efforts to block the president’s executive order, the more we dig, we find evidence of intimidating whistleblowers and other outrageous conduct.”
“This rogue agency is rotten waste to the core, and it needs to be defunded,” added Marocco.
The USADF was one of the agencies President Donald Trump ordered the elimination of “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” in February 2025.
Blaze News has reached out to USADF for comment.
Editor’s note: This story has been edited after publication to clarify how Blaze News obtained the documents and to add comment from Peter Marocco.
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DOST-TAPI eyes growth in intellectual property filings, technology adoption
The DOST-Technology Application and Promotion Institute on Friday said it aims for a 5% increase in intellectual property filings and commercialization and adoption of supported technologies this year.
Jesus ‘made love’: Colombian president irks Christians with steamy claim
BOGOTA, Colombia – A claim by Colombia’s left-wing president that Jesus “made love” to disciple Mary Magdalene has shocked the country’s many Christians, with the faithful urging him to show respect Friday.
Car agent linked to deaths of policewoman and her son now in PNP custody
Authorities have apprehended a car agent identified as a person of interest in the case involving the deaths of a policewoman and her son.
Ukraine races to bolster air defenses as Putin’s strike pause nears end
Ukraine is rushing to boost air defenses as a brief Russian airstrike pause on Kyiv nears an end. Experts warn the temporary halt may strengthen Moscow’s position.
Venezuela’s acting president overhauls oil industry amid pressure from Trump administration
Venezuela’s acting president signs law ending state oil monopoly, reversing decades of socialist policy to allow private companies control of the industry.
