LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman reportedly donated $7 million to Vice President Kamala Harris — and then promptly demanded that she fire Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan.
Hoffman — who sparked controversy for saying he wished Donald Trump was an “actual martyr” days before the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president — claimed the presumptive Democratic nominee would be “much more pro-business” than Trump.
“Trump wants tariffs, which is anti-business,” Hoffman told CNN on Wednesday.. “[That] makes this a very strange election indeed.”
The tech billionaire also took aim at Khan, the progressive FTC chair who has targeted Big Tech firms for alleged anti-competitive practices.
Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, Alphabet-owned Google and Apple have all faced intense scrutiny from the Biden administration.
Hoffman accused Khan of “waging war on American business” and said he hoped Harris would replace Khan if she wins the presidential elections this November.
Hoffman said he was backing Harris despite her intent to raise the corporate tax rate as well as the Biden administration’s decision to keep some of Trump’s tariffs in place.
“I think what’s most important for business is stability of a country, unity, rule of law,” Hoffman told CNN.
“A percent difference in corporate tax of 2% or 3% is far, far less important.”
The Post has sought comment from Hoffman, Harris and the FTC.
Harris has become the Democratic Party’s standard bearer after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race with less than four months to go before Election Day.
The stunning decision came after hand-wringing from Dem donors and party leaders following Biden’s debate debacle, where his mental acuity came into question.
Earlier this week, CNBC’s Jim Cramer predicted that if Harris were to win the White House, she would get rid of Khan as well as Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general who heads the antitrust division at the Justice Department.
Hoffman, 56, has frequently given to Democratic dark-money groups, including the Hopewell Fund, a nonprofit which is managed by Arabella Advisors, described as “a secretive dark money juggernaut.”
Arabella Advisors spent more than $1 billion to propel Biden to the White House in 2020.
The day after the Trump assassination attempt, Hoffman tried to clean up the inflammatory remarks he made the previous week while telling at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference.
Hoffman said he and fellow tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel had a falling out due to a “moral issue” — Thiel’s backing of Trump, according to Puck News.
Thiel, who was in the audience at the panel, spoke up and sarcastically thanked Hoffman for putting money behind lawsuits against Trump, saying the legal action had turned the 45th president into a “martyr.”
“Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr,” Hoffman reportedly replied.
Hoffman is no stranger to controversy.
He had to push back on ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2014, Hoffman paid a single visit to Epstein’s Caribbean compound on Little St. James — also now known as “pedophile island,” where Epstein and gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly abused underage girls, the Wall Street Journal reported.
He said he was trying to convince Epstein to make a donation to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
