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LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman said he’s worried President-elect Donald Trump will have the Internal Revenue Service subject him to an audit or have the government deny him contracts as retribution for his support for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hoffman, whose net worth was valued by Forbes at $2.6 billion as of Monday, told “The Diary of a CEO” podcast on Monday that he is bracing for “personal and political retaliation because I tried to help Harris get elected.”
“I think that there’s a greater than 50% chance that there will be repercussions from a misdirection and corruption of the institutions of state to respond to my having tried to help Harris get elected,” Hoffman told podcast host Steven Bartlett.
When Bartlett asked what form the retaliation could take, Hoffman replied that “it’s a range” and that “I hope that it’s only in the soft end of the range like IRS audits or phone calls” to deny him government contracts.
Hoffman cited the example of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post.
In 2019, Amazon sued the Trump administration after the company lost out on a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon.
Microsoft ended up winning the contract that Amazon was also vying for. The e-commerce company accused Trump of improperly influencing the decision due to his animosity toward Bezos, whose newspaper’s coverage of the then-president was critical.
Hoffman said in the interview that was streamed on Monday that the retribution from Trump “could get much worse but I don’t really want to speculate on it because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas.”
“But, like, I think … I would safely win a bet that there will be political repercussions that are essentially undemocratic, un-American … and direct to me,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman, who donated millions to Harris’ failed bid to win 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 to another country in the wake of Trump’s victory.
Hoffman, who sparked anger earlier this year when he remarked that he wished Trump would be an “actual martyr” just days before he was shot in a failed assassination attempt, reportedly told people in his inner circle that he was worried the president-elect would seek retribution against him.
In April last year, the Times reported that Hoffman also helped bankroll a defamation lawsuit filed by former New York magazine writer E. Jean Carroll against Trump.
Attorneys for Trump argued in court that Hoffman’s role in financing 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 damages for defamation after Trump said she was lying about rape allegations.
“President Trump will serve ALL Americans, even those who did not vote for him in the election,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition team, said in a statement to The Post.
“He will unify the country through success.”