Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, who days before the Trump assassination attempt allegedly said he wanted to make the former president a "martyr," serves on the board of directors of two prestigious organizations that have taken stands against extremist rhetoric.
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Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, who days before the Trump assassination attempt allegedly said he wanted to make the former president a "martyr," serves on the board of directors of two prestigious organizations that have taken stands against extremist rhetoric.
Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, serves on the Microsoft board of directors and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board, which advises the agency on new war-fighting technologies.
Hoffman, a former associate of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, said last week he wishes he could have made Donald Trump "an actual martyr," according to Puck. Hoffman has funded a number of anti-Trump and anti-GOP causes over the years, including gossip columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against the former president.
His latest remarks came under renewed scrutiny after an attempted assassin shot Trump in the ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. After the shooting, Hoffman tried to clarify his "martyr" comment and condemned the attempted assassination. But he quickly pivoted to attacking Trump over his rhetoric about the Capitol riots. And the night of the shooting, Hoffman political adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn suggested in a memo to sympathetic journalists that the shooting may have been "staged" to help Trump politically. Hoffman and Mehlhorn have visited the White House numerous times, according to visitor logs.
Hoffman’s remarks have already caused headaches for Democrats, who have taken tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations from the tech titan this year. But it could also raise questions for Microsoft and the Pentagon, both of which have embraced initiatives to root out extremism on tech platforms and the military, respectively. A group of political activists plans to pressure Microsoft to kick Hoffman off the board over his recent comments, according to a source familiar with the plan.
At Microsoft, Hoffman is on the board of directors’ Environmental, Social, and Public Policy Committee, which provides advice on "non-financial regulatory risks" that may have an impact on Microsoft’s "ability to sustain trust with customers, employees, and the public." The committee also oversees "public policy" and "government relations activities" on behalf of the board.
Hoffman was appointed to the Defense Innovation Board in September 2022. The board, chaired by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, is tasked with advising Pentagon leaders on "critical matters relating to innovation and to address challenges and accelerate innovation adoption into the culture, technologies, organizational structures, processes, and functions of the Department of Defense."
Hoffman, who has given $6 million to a pro-Biden super PAC this year, has sometimes used ethically dubious tactics in a bid to hurt Trump and Republicans politically. In 2017, he funded an initiative to use fake social media accounts to persuade Republican voters to sit out of a special election for the Alabama Senate seat. Hoffman apologized for funding the operation after it was revealed by the New York Times in 2018.
The Pentagon and Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.
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