Peter Thiel may be laying the groundwork to buy Gawker after his clandestine legal effort to destroy the publication
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Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel may be attempting to buy the now-defunct news site Gawker.com after clandestinely financing the legal effort that brought down its Gawker Media parent company.
BuzzFeed News reports that lawyers for Thiel have objected to the sale process for Gawker.com, contending the Silicon Valley billionaire has been unfairly excluded from bidding for the assets.
Gawker’s sister sites were sold to Univision for $135 million, but the bankruptcy administrator has been unable to find a buyer for the flagship website.
“In light of the Plan Administrator’s refusal to allow Mr. Thiel to participate in the sale process, Mr. Thiel’s counsel requested that the Plan Administrator agree to pause the ongoing sale process so that a sale of the assets is not consummated until the issues concerning the Plan Administrator’s blockade of Mr. Thiel as a bidder are resolved,” the filing reads.
Thiel founded PayPal and was the first major Facebook investor. He also backed Republican Donald Trump from president in 2016.
As BuzzFeed notes, if Thiel were to buy Gawker.com, he would have the right to delete any and all stories in the archive.
Also on Tuesday, Reuters reported that Thiel sold 160,805 shares in Facebook for approximately $29 million.
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