No, Bill Gates is not related to Ghislaine Maxwell

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A social media post claims Bill Gates is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, but it’s just the latest conspiracy theory to plague the billionaire philanthropist during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gates has been the focus of several conspiracy theories since the pandemic began.

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Bill Gates said to be related to Ghislaine Maxwell

FactCheck.org called attention to the Facebook post that claims Bill Gates is related to Ghislaine Maxwell and debunked the conspiracy theory. The website noted that over the years, conspiracy theories have repeatedly made false claims about family relationships among public figures.

Maxwell was arrested last month on charges of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein in the sexual abuse of minors. Since her arrest, there have been multiple theories claiming that she is related to people, but they have been false.

More recently, a Facebook post claimed that Bill Gates is related to Ghislaine Maxwell.

Another conspiracy theory about Gates

The conspiracy theory linking Bill Gates to Ghislaine Maxwell stems from an Aug. 4 social media post from an account that's associated with QAnon. The well-known conspiracy theory group posted a picture that it said showed Gates with a Jewish rabbi.

Not only did the photo not show Gates, but the caption that accompanied it was false. The caption claimed Gates was shown with Rabbi Schneerson, who heads up "the Jewish extremist and end times cult Chabad Lubavitch." It also stated that Gates' mother is a Maxwell and is "related to the Israeli Mossad agents Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine, who used child trafficking to blackmail world leaders with Jeffrey Epstein."

The photo originally went with an article published in The Jerusalem Post in 2014. It actually shows the author of the article, Yosef I Abramowitz, with Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1992. Gates isn't even referenced in the article.

Bill Gates isn't related to Ghislaine Maxwell

Aside from falsely claiming that Bill Gates is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, the Facebook post also misrepresented the Microsoft co-founder's relation. He isn't Jewish, and although he has raised his children in the Catholic church his wife belongs to, he doesn't hold Catholic views either.

According to FactCheck.org, the maiden name of Gates' mother, Mary Gates, is indeed Maxwell. However, there seems to be no family relation between her and Ghislaine Maxwell. Her father, James Willard Maxwell Jr., was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, was born in Czechoslovakia under the name Jan Ludvik Hoch. Most of Maxwell's family died in the Holocaust, although he escaped, first to France, followed by the U.K.