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 said he's "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, per the AP. 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 called Buffett "one of the greatest philanthropists of all time, and a dear friend" who he hopes to spend much more time with in the future. "His wisdom, generosity, and deep sense of purpose have defined both his life and his philanthropy. His support for the Gates Foundation, at nearly $50 billion over the past twenty years, has been unprecedented, and it has helped save millions of lives," Gates said in a statement. The Gates Foundation will still have tremendous resources: its endowment was worth nearly $90 billion at the end of last year and Gates has promised to donate nearly all his remaining fortune to the foundation. Buffett said he wants his own Berkshire shares to be distributed even quicker than he has previously indicated: by the end of 2034. To do that, he will have to drastically increase the amount he donates to more than $17 billion annually.
Right now he is giving roughly $6 billion to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and the foundations his children run: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Novo Foundation. Buffett filed documents with the SEC on Wednesday that showed he had donated a total of 12 million Class B Berkshire shares a day earlier to those foundations. The majority of that is going to the foundation named in honor of his late wife, which may quickly become one of the world's largest such organizations. Buffett has said that after his death, a new foundation will be created to distribute the rest of his shares and that his children will have to agree unanimously on where to donate them. He wants his children to be able to make those decisions before they die or become senile, and his oldest daughter will be nearly 81 in eight years.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
