#Donald trump gawker how to

In March, a Florida jury awarded Bollea a stunning $140 million, more than he had even asked for. The site had run a snippet of video of Terry Bollea (Hogan’s real name) having sex with his friend’s wife. But the ex-wrestler’s dramatic case seemed primed for a Gawker smackdown.

It’s not clear exactly when Thiel began to covertly bankroll Hulk Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy suit against Gawker. Thiel apparently nursed a vengeance for years, as he looked for other Gawker “victims” to help take down his nemesis. Peter Thiel’s ongoing punishment of Gawker is disturbing on several levels. “Journalists and their lawyers ought to be arming themselves for a protracted war.” And it comes “at a moment when the press is far more vulnerable, economically and culturally, than it used to be,” writes Nicholas Lemann, a former dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. This method of bankrupting by bank-shot litigation can circumvent the First Amendment protections that the Supreme Court established for journalists in the 1964 decision New York Times Co. Very few companies have the legal wherewithal to withstand such a barrage.”

#Donald trump gawker how to

But Thiel has shown them how to go thermonuclear: bankroll other lawsuits, as many as it takes, and bankrupt the news organization that way. Up until now, they’ve mostly been content suing news organizations as plaintiffs, over stories which name them. Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, the list goes on and on. Worse, writes financial journalist Felix Salmon, Thiel has provided “a dangerous blueprint” that “could be used by any billionaire against any media organization.