PayPal co-founder and Trump ally Peter Thiel has sold the majority of his stake in Facebook and reportedly seeks to purchase the remains of Gawker.
According to Reuters, Thiel, who was Facebook’s first major investor, “has sold three-quarters of his remaining stake in the social network as part of a previously established trading plan, a regulatory filing showed.”
“Thiel, who is a member of Facebook’s board had already sold more than $1 billion worth of its stock before the filing made on Tuesday,” they claimed, adding, “he had sold another 160,805 shares for about $29 million, leaving his holdings at 59,913 Class A shares in the company.”
This week, it was also reported that Thiel is looking to purchase the remains of Gawker.com, which he helped destroy after funding former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the company.
Gawker Media was ordered to pay over $140 million to Hogan after they published excerpts of his sex tape, which resulted in Gawker Media’s sale and its flagship website shutting down.
“Gawker bankruptcy plan administrators were looking to sell the Gawker.com domain, and were searching for buyers,” reported Business Insider on Wednesday. “The problem, it seems, is that Thiel’s lawyers believe he’s being unfairly excluded from the bidding process, and that the sale should be paused until the matter is resolved. This objection would seem to signal that Thiel is interested in bidding on Gawker.com and its assets, which would include its archive of articles, its branding, and its social media accounts. Any potential owner would be free to delete the Gawker.com archives.”
Following Gawker’s death, Thiel claimed his hand in the destruction was “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”
Thiel backed Hogan’s lawsuit after Gawker outed him as a gay man in 2007.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.
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