Sean Parker
Angela Weiss / Getty Images
Following questions raised about his role in a secret, years-long anti-Gawker Media campaign, Sean Parker denied being the person who encouraged tech billionaire and PayPal founder Peter Thiel to secretly finance a series of lawsuits against the company, including one brought by Hulk Hogan that resulted in a $140 million judgement.
Parker and Thiel were both involved early on in Facebook. Parker is the company's former president, and Thiel, its first investor, still sits on its board. Parker and Thiel subsequently worked together at Thiel's Founder's Fund, where Parker was a managing partner.
Parker's name came up following a New York Times story published on Wednesday, in which Thiel admitted to being the person who had financed the Hogan suit. Thiel said he was motivated by a 2007 story that outed him as being gay, as well as a series of articles about his friends. He also told the Times that one friend, in particular, urged him to take action.
Mr. Thiel said that he had decided several years ago to set his plan in motion. “I didn’t really want to do anything,” he said. “I thought it would do more harm to me than good. One of my friends convinced me that if I didn’t do something, nobody would.”
In response to the revelation, Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton wrote an open letter to Thiel on Thursday. In it, he suggests that Parker may have been one of the friends Thiel refers to that was a subject of Gawker's stories. And later, among a series of "pointed and immediate" questions, Denton asks "Is Sean Parker the friend you mentioned that persuaded you to pursue this campaign?" But Parker says it wasn't him.
"I didn't know he was doing this until very recently, so I'm not the person Nick Denton was talking about," Parker told BuzzFeed News in a text message. Previously, a Parker representative told Fusion that he had played no role in the litigation against Gawker.
So it seems at least one of Denton's questions has been answered. That just leaves nine more to go.
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