A super PAC launched this year to "empower" Republican women to vote against Donald Trump is funded almost entirely by a Democratic megadonor linked to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, according to campaign finance records.
Reid Hoffman, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, has given $518,000 since July to Women4Us Inc., which reported roughly $644,000 in campaign contributions since July 1. Another super PAC funded heavily by Hoffman, One For All Committee, has contributed $86,000 to Women4Us, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Hoffman’s deep financial involvement in Women4Us raises questions for an organization that calls itself a group of "GOP women, standing together to vote for Kamala Harris to protect our rights."
Women4Us was cofounded by three political consultants with backgrounds in Republican politics. Its honorary advisers include anti-Trump Republicans Christine Todd Whitman, Susan Molinari, and Jennifer Horn, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, the scandal-plagued anti-Trump group. Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R., Ill.) and Republican consultant Heath Mayo are listed as "allies" of the organization.
The group makes no public mention of Hoffman, a venture capitalist who cofounded LinkedIn. Hoffman, who has given tens of millions of dollars to Democratic causes this year, has been at the center of several recent scandals over both his deceptive political tactics and his controversial personal relationships.
Hoffman apologized in 2019 for his role in rehabilitating Epstein’s image by hosting the disgraced financier at fundraising events with other tech billionaires. Hoffman also visited Epstein’s Virgin Islands getaway, known as "Pedophile Island," in 2014, years after Epstein was publicly accused of raping and trafficking underage girls.
And though Hoffman has called Trump "an existential threat to democracy," he has funded several initiatives that use deceptive tactics to dissuade Republicans from taking part in the democratic process. In 2018, Hoffman admitted to funding a technology firm that created fake social media personas in order to convince conservatives to sit out the 2017 Alabama Senate special election. Hoffman and fellow Democratic megadonor George Soros have invested millions of dollars in Courier Newsroom, a network of partisan liberal websites that are disguised to look like nonpartisan news organizations.
Women4Us is not Hoffman’s first time funding a group of allegedly disaffected Republican women. In 2018, he was the sole donor to the Republican Women for Progress PAC, which poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into congressional campaigns to elect Democratic female candidates, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
In its bid to defeat Trump, Women4Us has aired a handful of digital advertisements focused on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The group has held several events with anti-Trump Republicans Liz Cheney, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Sofia Kinzinger, the wife of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
Horn, the Lincoln Project cofounder, has appeared on national cable networks to promote Women4Us’s efforts to turn out anti-Trump Republican women. Women4Us paid Horn $20,000 from Aug. 14 to Sept. 19 for "communications consulting," according to campaign finance records.
Horn received $550,000 from the Lincoln Project as part of a mysterious legal settlement after she quit the super PAC over its handling of sexual harassment complaints against John Weaver, another Lincoln Project cofounder.
Hoffman has courted controversy in other ways, too. In July, he said he wished he had made Trump "an actual martyr." Days later, an attempted assassin shot Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Liberals criticized Hoffman after he called on Kamala Harris to fire Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Lina Khan, whom Hoffman accused of "waging a war on American business." That stoked concerns that Hoffman, who has contributed tens of millions of dollars to the main super PAC backing Harris, would use his wealth to pressure Harris if she is elected. Hoffman serves on the board of directors of Microsoft, which has been the target of antitrust investigations led by Khan.
Hoffman and Women4Us did not respond to requests for comment.