An adviser to prominent Democrat donor Reid Hoffman reportedly emailed journalists on Saturday night suggesting that former President Donald Trump might have staged his own assassination attempt.
Dmitri Mehlhorn, according to emails obtained by Semafor, suggested Saturday’s events were “encouraged and maybe even staged” for clout, adding “this is a classic Putin play and given the facts seems more plausible.”
Mehlhorn is an advisor to Hoffman, the leftist LinkedIn founder who — in addition to bankrolling Democrat campaigns — has funded election disinformation and anti-Trump lawfare.
Mehlhorn sent an email “that appeared to be addressed to sympathetic journalists” the evening of the assassination attempt, according to Semafor, claiming Trump may have staged the shooting which wounded the former president and killed one attendee.
He briefly acknowledged the possibility that “some crazy anti-Trumper” committed the violence before suggesting Trump had orchestrated it himself, comparing the former president to Russians and Hamas.
“The other possibility – which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally – is that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get photos and benefit from the backlash,” Mehlhorn suggested. “This is a classic Russian tactic, such as when Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power. Others who have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefitting from the backlash include Hamas on October 7.”
Hypocrisy
Hoffman, Mehlhorn’s advisee, seemingly promoted violence against Trump in an
