Activist shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway arrested for mentioning Bill Gates’ connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

Conservative Group Leader Booted and Arrested at Berkshire Hathaway Meeting

Background

Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), was recently arrested at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting after questioning founder Warren Buffett’s politics and bringing up dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Flaherty had been recognized to speak in support of a proposal to require the roles of CEO and chairman be held by two different people. Both of those titles are currently held by Buffett, and Flaherty argued the Omaha-based company would be less identified with Buffett’s political activities if the chair was independent.

The Incident

After getting into how Buffett donated billions of dollars to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ foundation, as well as efforts supporting Critical Race Theory and gender ideology, Flaherty said a Berkshire official approached to tell him to stay on topic. Buffett gave him the go-ahead to continue, and that’s when Flaherty mentioned Gates’ ties to Epstein.

“We know how much Bill Gates cares about children,” Flaherty said. “He met and traveled with Jeffrey Epstein many times after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.”

Video posted to social media shows the audience erupt in boos and some whistling when Flaherty brought up Epstein. Flaherty told The Daily Wire that at some point he realized his microphone had been cut as he continued to speak about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before two security officials removed him from the venue and Omaha police arrested him. Arrest documents show Flaherty was charged with refusing to comply with a request to leave. He was released on a $250 bond and is expected back in court on May 22.

Reaction

“I believe I touched the third rail of billionaire relations: Jeffrey Epstein,” Flaherty told The Daily Wire on Monday. With more than a decade of shareholder activism under his belt, Flaherty decried what he said was an “unprecedented” arrest and said Berkshire Hathaway had “no right to silence me.”

Video appears to show Buffett, who was on stage, responding to Flaherty, saying “you crossed the boundary” before explaining that his donations came from his money and not funds from Berkshire Hathaway. Bloomberg News reported that the proposal sponsored by NLPC was defeated by a wide margin, though Flaherty told The Daily Wire that he counts defeated proposals as victories when they garner a certain amount of support.

Background on Epstein and Gates

In 2008, after Epstein was accused of sexually abusing female minors in Florida, he reached a deal with federal prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to state-level prostitution charges, registered as a sex offender, and served roughly 13 months in jail and in a work-release program. Epstein died at the age of 66 in his New York City jail cell in August 2019 after being arrested on sex trafficking charges involving young girls and pleading not guilty.

Gates has acknowledged having dinners with Epstein for what he says were philanthropic reasons, and has called those meetings a “mistake.” Melinda French Gates cited her now-ex-husband’s meetings with Epstein, whom she called “abhorrent,” while telling CBS last year about the various factors that led to her divorce from Bill Gates.

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