LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said he’s worried President-elect Donald Trump will have him audited by the Internal Revenue Service or the government will deny him contracts as retaliation for his support of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hoffman, whose net worth was valued by forbes Reported to be $2.6 billion as of Monday “The Diary of a CEO” Podcast on Mondays He is “prepared for personal and political retribution because I tried to help Harris get elected.”
“I think there’s a better than 50% chance that my effort to help Harris get elected will be met with misdirection and corruption of state institutions,” Hoffman told podcast host Steven Bartlett.
When Bartlet asked what form the retaliation might take, Hoffman replied that “it’s a range” and “I hope it’s only on the soft end of the range like an IRS audit or a phone call” that would allow him to receive government contracts. Can be deprived of.
Hoffman cited the example of Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.
In 2019, Amazon sued the Trump administration after the company lost a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon.
Microsoft ultimately won the contract for which Amazon was also competing. The e-commerce company accused Trump of improperly influencing the decision because of his hostility toward Bezos, whose newspaper coverage of the then-President was critical.
Hoffman said in an interview streamed Monday that Trump’s retaliation “could be much worse but I really don’t want to speculate on it because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas.”
Hoffman said, “But, like, I think…I’d safely bet that there would be political outcomes that are essentially undemocratic, un-American…and straight to me.”
Hoffman, Who donated millions to Harris’s failed bid to win the White HouseSaid he had no plans to leave the country.
last month, The New York Times reported Hoffman was privately telling friends and associates that he was considering Relocating to another country in the wake of Trump’s victory.
Hoffman, which sparked anger earlier this year When he commented that he wanted Trump to become a “real martyr” in a matter of days Before being shot in a failed assassination attemptReportedly, he told his insiders that he was worried that the President-elect would seek retribution against him.
In April last year, The Times reported that Hoffman It also helped finance a defamation suit filed against Trump by former New York magazine writer E. Jean Carroll.
Trump’s lawyers argued in court that Hoffman’s role in financing the lawsuit raised “significant questions” about Carroll’s credibility.
A jury found Trump liable for sexual misconduct and defamation of Carroll in 1996. He was awarded damages of $5 million.
Earlier this year, another jury Carroll awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages for defamation After Trump said she was lying about the rape allegations.
“President Trump will serve all Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election,” Carolyn Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in a statement to The Post.
“He will unite the country through success.”
