And while Thiel has been footing the legal bills that could shutter one news organization, he has also extended his financial support to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit foundation that defends “the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal. The C.I.A.’s venture-capital arm has invested in Palantir. An avowed libertarian, Thiel is both a big believer in privacy from the government and a co-founder of Palantir, a multi-billion-dollar start-up that collects data about its clients’ users and monetizes their personal information. Thiel, 48, is a complicated and contradictory character. A day after the Times report was published, Forbes confirmed the involvement of Thiel, who declined to comment on the matter. A 2007 article titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people” outed Thiel. Thiel has been among those written about extensively by Gawker’s now defunct tech blog, Valleywag. On Monday, The New York Times reported that Denton himself suspected someone, perhaps in Silicon Valley, was funding the suits against Gawker, which specializes in skewering powerful people in tech, business, and media. Sean Gentille 6 min read In hindsight, it should've seemed inevitable that a penis would be a discussion point in a sex-tape trial, and yet here we are, surprised about Hulk Hogan. A jury on Friday awarded Hulk Hogan 115 million in his lawsuit against Gawker Media, agreeing the company violated his privacy by posting a sex tape of the ex-pro wrestler online. (Gawker founder Nick Denton has already been forced to sell a minority stake to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, allegedly to help pay his legal bills in the case.) Rumors that a secret, wealthy benefactor was bankrolling Hogan’s suits had swirled around the case for some time. If Gawker fails to successfully appeal, Hogan’s award could potentially shut down Gawker Media, or force it to be sold in full. Hogan, who sued the online news organization for defamation over the publication of a sex tape, won $140 million in damages in March. Thiel, a PayPal co-founder, early Facebook investor, and partner and co-founder at venture-capital firm Founders Fund, “has played a lead role in bankrolling the cases,” Forbes reported Tuesday. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has been unmasked as the shadowy figure reportedly funding former wrestler Hulk Hogan’s ongoing, extraordinarily costly lawsuits against Gawker Media.
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