Billionaire and top Democrat donor Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, has been revealed to be funding a lawsuit to silence election reporting. Hoffman is the same Democrat donor who funded a “Russian-style” disinformation campaign in 2017, financially backed E. Jean Carroll’s suspicious lawsuit against Donald Trump, and visited pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
Hoffman is investing millions in Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News and Newsmax for defamation following the 2020 election, according to The Washington Post. Hoffman said he intends to help keep the company afloat, as it has been pursuing expensive legal retribution against the outlets for their election reporting.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Hoffman claimed “Smartmatic became a target of the defamatory campaign to overturn [Trump’s] defeat.”
Fox and Newsmax hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes. Smartmatic alleges that hosting these discussions constituted defamation. Fox settled a suit with Dominion Voting last year over similar allegations.
But some news reports raised well-founded tabulator concerns. Tabulator software in Antrim County, Michigan glitched in November 2020, counting 6,000 Republican votes as Democrat.
Fox has long expressed concerns that there was a deep-pocketed “third party” behind the lawsuit. Smartmatic denied this in 2023, according to Reuters.
“Fox was apparently wrong all along about Smartmatic’s funding: No outsider is paying Smartmatic’s litigation costs,” the article confidently claimed, citing Smartmatic’s attorney.
It is unclear when Hoffman started investing in
