FIRST ON FOX: The Democrat tech billionaire who helped rehab Jeffrey Epstein’s image and visited his island has poured thousands in donations into several vulnerable Senate races across the country.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently gave the maximum donations of $6,600 each to the campaigns of Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
All three races are considered battlegrounds going into Election Day 2024.
News of the donations come after the Wall Street Journal reported in May that Hoffman visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island, called Little St. James, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, on at least one occasion in 2014.
Hoffman and the now-deceased convicted pedophile were planning to return to the island in November 2014, and then travel to Boston, the report said. It’s unclear what the intent was for those planned trips, but the report also revealed Hoffman was planning to stay at Epstein’s luxury Manhattan townhouse in December 2014 after a late arrival in New York City.
Hoffman also sent the maximum $6,600 donation on June 14 to the campaign of California Democrat Will Rollins, who is again trying to grab a congressional seat after a narrow loss during the 2022 elections, Fox News Digital reported Tuesday.
Fox News Digital also reported this week that the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee authorized by the Biden campaign, received a whopping $699,600.00 donation from Hoffman on April 26 and a maximum donation of $6,600 went directly to Biden’s campaign.
Hoffman recently made headlines in June after Biden attended a fundraiser the billionaire hosted on behalf of the Biden Victory Fund at the private residence of Shannon Hunt-Scott and Kevin Scott in Los Gatos, California.
Hoffman told The Journal in May it “gnaws at” him that his association with Epstein “helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors.”
“My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015. Still, by agreeing to participate in any fundraising activity where Epstein was present, I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice,” Hoffman said in 2019. “For this, I am deeply regretful.”
The 2015 interaction was when he invited Epstein to a Silicon Valley dinner with tech industry leaders.
In September that same year, Hoffman attended a state dinner hosted by then-Vice President Biden at the White House in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Fox News Digital has previously reported that Hoffman’s money also goes into nontraditional groups that aren’t mandated to report their funding and often operate in the shadows. He was forced to issue an apology in 2018 for funding a group that falsely tried to give an impression that the Russian government was supporting Alabama Republican Roy Moore in a 2017 special Senate election.
Biden has benefited from Hoffman’s lavish spending on campaign contributions, donating $1.5 million to a super PAC that supported Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 election as well as the maximum individual dollar amount allowed to Biden’s campaign, according to FEC records.
Such spending can come with certain perks – such as access. According to White House visitor logs, Hoffman visited the White House five times last year. One of the visits appears to have been for the state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron. The other four trips were for meetings with Madeline Strasser, who at the time advised then-White House chief of staff Ron Klain; Kimberly Lang, who at the time was the executive assistant to Biden’s national security adviser; and Jordan Finkelstein, a special assistant to Biden and chief of staff to the president’s senior adviser.
Hoffman and the campaigns for Tester, Rosen, and Casey did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall, Aaron Kliegman and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.
