LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said he is worried President-elect Donald Trump will have the Internal Revenue Service subject him to an audit or the government will deny him contracts as punishment for his support. for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hoffman, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes at $2.6 billion as of Monday, said Monday on the “Diary of a CEO” podcast that he is bracing for “personal and political revenge because I tried to help Harris get elected.” .
“I think there’s a better than 50% chance that there will be consequences of mismanagement and corruption of state institutions to respond to my efforts to help Harris get elected,” Hoffman told podcast host Steven Bartlett.
When Bartlett asked what form the retaliation might take, Hoffman replied that “it’s a range” and that “I hope it’s only on the soft end of the range like IRS audits or phone calls” to deny him government contracts.
Hoffman cited the example of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post.
In 2019, Amazon sued the Trump administration after the company lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon.
Microsoft ended up winning the contract that Amazon was also competing for. The e-commerce company accused Trump of improperly influencing the decision because of his animosity toward Bezos, whose newspaper coverage of the then-president was critical.
Hoffman said in the interview that aired Monday that Trump’s punishment “could get a lot worse, but I don’t want to really speculate because I don’t want to give anybody any idea.”
“But, like, I think…I’d probably win a bet that there will be political consequences that are fundamentally undemocratic, un-American…and straight to me,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman, who donated millions to Harris’ failed bid for the White House, said he had no plans to leave the country.
Last month, the New York Times reported that Hoffman was privately telling friends and associates that he was considering relocating after Trump’s victory.
Hoffman, who sparked outrage earlier this year when he said he wished Trump would be a “real martyr” just days before he was shot in a failed assassination attempt, reportedly told people in his circle to insider that he was worried that the president-elect would seek retribution against him.
In April of last year, the Times reported that Hoffman also helped fund a defamation lawsuit filed by former New York magazine writer E. Jean Carroll against Trump.
Trump’s lawyers argued in court that Hoffman’s role in funding the lawsuit raised “significant questions” about Carroll’s credibility.
A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996 and for defamation. She was awarded $5 million in damages.
Earlier this year, another jury awarded Carroll an additional $83.3 million in defamation damages 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,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition team, in a statement to The Post.
“He will unite the country through success.”
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