American billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, was the largest donor last quarter to House Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC that is now running television ads accusing Republican lawmakers of shielding Jeffrey Epstein.
Hoffman gave $8.5 million to the group over the period, according to Federal Election Commission filings released last week, putting him well ahead of the next-biggest contributor, the Economic Opportunity Fund, at $5 million. Rory Gates, a son of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, gave $2.5 million. The filings do not show which donors’ money paid for any particular ad.
His role has drawn attacks from Republicans because of his own past dealings with Epstein, the financier who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Hoffman has said those contacts were tied to fundraising for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he has publicly expressed regret over them.
Ads aimed at Republicans
House Majority PAC, which works to elect Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives, has spent about $2.33 million on Epstein-related ads in nine congressional districts ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, according to ad-tracking data. Most of the spots went up in the past week.
One ad targets Representative Nick Begich of Alaska over his vote against a procedural motion tied to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. “How did Jeffrey Epstein hide it? He was protected by the elites, elites like Nick Begich,” the ad says. Begich later voted for the bill itself, which became law in November 2025 and required the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein.
The group’s spending is part of a wider Democratic push to make the Epstein files a campaign issue in Republican-leaning districts and states. More than 150 Epstein-themed ads have aired this election cycle. House Majority PAC and its sister group, House Majority Forward, raised a combined $230 million in the third quarter, their biggest quarter on record.
Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said: “Democrats have no morals when power and money are on the line, and they’ll take both from anyone willing to write a check.”
Hoffman’s past ties
Hoffman was introduced to Epstein in 2013, years after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. He helped raise money from Epstein for the MIT Media Lab at the request of Joi Ito, the lab’s director at the time, and visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2014 for what Ito described as a fundraising event. Hoffman has said he last dealt with Epstein in 2015. He has not been charged with or accused by prosecutors of any wrongdoing connected to Epstein.
“My last interaction with Epstein was in 2015,” Hoffman said in 2019, after MIT’s ties to Epstein became public. “I helped to repair his reputation and perpetuate injustice. For this, I am deeply regretful.”
In November 2025, President Donald Trump asked the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s links to Hoffman, former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Hoffman called the move “political persecution and slander” and said he was never a client of Epstein’s. He also wrote on X: “Trump should release all of the Epstein files: every person and every document in the files.” Around the same time, he helped pay for a prime-time ad by an anti-trafficking group calling on Congress to release the files in full.
Hoffman, 59, made his fortune as a co-founder of LinkedIn, which Microsoft bought for $26.2 billion in 2016, and as an early investor in companies such as Facebook and Airbnb. He is a partner at venture capital firm Greylock and one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, having spent millions of dollars opposing Trump in past elections.