Reid Hoffman photographed by Joi Ito, former head of the MIT Media Lab, on April 25, 2009. Both photographer and subject have been criticized for their close ties to notorious sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, but Hoffman has thus far not been forced off of Microsoft's board of directors.
Reid Hoffman Faces Call to Resign from Microsoft Board after Trump ‘Martyr’ Remark
LinkedIn founder with ties to Epstein raises eyebrows over violent imagery
By Katy Grimes, July 18, 2024 4:04 pm
It’s not just the occupant in the White House who appears to be non compos mentis now quarantined with an alleged case of Covid – this week has been a rollercoaster of emotions because of bizarre events.
Former President Donald Trump – now the Republican Party Presidential nominee – was shot during an assasasination attempt Saturday while speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The shooting culminated months/years of histrionic rhetoric, with the left claiming that Trump is Hitler, a fascist, a would-be dictator, that he will personally take away women’s bodily autonomy and outlaw abortions, among other rabid claims.
Now, the New York Post reported that tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, said he wished Donald Trump was an “actual martyr” days before Saturday’s assassination attempt. Hoffman is now facing calls to resign his seat on Microsoft’s board of directors. “His place on the board was given as part of his $26 billion sale of LinkedIn to Microsoft in 2016,” the Post said.
This isn’t Hoffman’s first brush with controversy. Hoffman bankrolled E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit against Donald Trump over her claim that 30-years ago he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman.
Hoffman has also funded civil lawsuits filed by the victims of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to a post on LinkedIn,” Forbes reported.
In March, the Globe reported an anti-Trump group backed by billionaires Reid Hoffman, Seth Klarman and John Pritzker launched a $50 million ad campaign to attack Trump. Featuring discontented Trump voters, “Republican Voters Against Trump” deliriously claimed, Trump “has praised our enemies like Vladimir Putin and intends to abandon our NATO allies and the Ukrainian people. He wants to install loyalists in his next administration who will ensure that he gets what he wants, no matter how unlawful. He now faces 91 felonies in four separate indictments for falsifying business records, mishandling classified documents, trying to overturn the 2020 election, and pressuring the Republican Georgia Secretary of State to ‘find him’ votes.”
The billionaires also spent more than $1.7 million to oppose JD Vance’s run for U.S. Senate. We know how that worked out.
But the question is why? It’s one thing to fund candidates that reflect one’s point of view. But quite another to spend millions on lawsuits unrelated to one’s own interests.
Some have speculated that the reason the billionaire is so interested in helping advance the goals of Democrats has to do with a much darker explanation: Hoffman’s connection to notorious serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s widely known that the connection between Hoffman and Epstein was deep and longstanding. According to The Daily Mail, “Reid Hoffman visited Epstein’s ‘pedophile island’ AFTER Epstein’s conviction.” According to its 2023 reporting, “Billionaire Reid Hoffman visited disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean Island after he was convicted of sex crimes – asking the pedophile billionaire to help raise funds for MIT.”
According to published reports, Hoffman visited the island with MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito and had been asked by Ito to join Epstein in raising funds for the Media Lab. With Epstein eventually convicted for a second time and Ito forced to resign from the lab in disgrace, it’s even more notable that the third leg of that stool, Reid Hoffman, seems to have faced no consequences
Hoffman traveled to the island with Joi Ito, the then-MIT Media Lab director, who had asked Hoffman and Epstein to help raise funds for MIT.
“Last year, NLPC criticized Microsoft for allowing Hoffman to continue serving after the Wall Street Journal revealed he had visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little Saint James, in 2014 and made plans to stay at the convicted billionaire pedophile’s Upper East Side townhouse,” the NY Post reported. “National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based good government non-profit, sent a letter to the corporation demanding ‘a special meeting’ of the board to vote on his removal.”
Perhaps the most curious aspect of Reid Hoffman’s political and legal activities is despite so many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs having abandoned Joe Biden—and either boarding the Trump train or clamoring for a more spry Democratic candidate—Hoffman remains as anti-Trump and pro-Biden as ever.
“The Democrat tech billionaire who helped rehab Jeffrey Epstein’s image and visited his island has poured thousands in donations into several vulnerable Senate races across the country,” Fox News reported last July.
One source, a credible entrepreneur with deep ties to Silicon Valley power centers, was recently asked why he thought Hoffman continued to carry water for the Biden campaign. The source gave a one-word answer: “Epstein.”
The Globe was unable to confirm exactly what that cryptic answer means but took it to indicate speculation that the Biden Administration had agreed not to pursue charges against Hoffman for Epstein-adjacent activities. Or perhaps more darkly had indicated that if Hoffman wandered offside the way Adam Schiff and George Clooney and other high-profile Californians have, perhaps the infamous “Jeffrey Epstein Client List” would find its way into the media.
To be clear, that’s simply speculation. But what’s indisputable is that many individuals whose connections to Epstein were far more tenuous paid a higher price than Hoffman has to date.
Hoffman has expressed remorse for his association with the notorious pedo. In 2019, he issued a statement: “My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015. Still, by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice … For this, I am deeply regretful.”
But while many Epstein associates have portrayed their connection as Epstein cloyingly trying to rehab his reputation by inviting them to his home, in Hoffman’s case the affection seems to have gone both ways. That 2015 “interaction” appears to refer to a time when Reid Hoffman invited Jeffrey Epstein to a “Silicon Valley dinner with tech industry leaders.”
RELATED ARTICLES
-
January 9, 2024 -
November 1, 2018 -
September 27, 2018
Perhaps Herr Hoffman would be more comfortable kvetching in Israel. Yes…that would be a nice destination for him.