
"Reid will spend the night at 71st."
That's from an email by Reid Hoffman's own team, released in the Justice Department's Epstein files. "71st" is East 71st Street in Manhattan, where Jeffrey Epstein had his townhouse.
Hoffman is the billionaire who co-founded LinkedIn. He's also one of the Democratic Party's biggest donors. And he gave $250,000 to Iowa Democrat Rob Sand, who's running for governor tomorrow.
Sand still has the money. He's had it since at least February.
Hoffman's name shows up roughly 2,600 times in the Epstein files. He's admitted the relationship. "Interacting with Epstein post-conviction is something I deeply regret," he said in 2019.
Post-conviction. Epstein had already pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting a minor. He was a registered sex offender. Hoffman kept showing up anyway, and reportedly visited Epstein's private island too.
Hoffman says it was all to raise money for MIT's Media Lab, at the request of the lab's director. He says his last contact with Epstein was in 2015. He hasn't been charged with any crime. But nobody racks up 2,600 mentions in a sex trafficker's records from a couple of fundraising dinners, and nobody has their staff schedule overnight stays at his house for MIT.
Here's where the hypocrisy comes in.
Democrats spent this fall hammering Republicans over Epstein. Their super PACs ran ads using the Epstein files to attack GOP candidates. And who's paying for those ads? Hoffman was reportedly the single largest donor to House Majority PAC last quarter, at $8.5 million. He gave another $5 million to Chuck Schumer's Senate Majority PAC in September.
So the man whose staff booked him overnight stays at Epstein's townhouse is helping fund the Democrats' Epstein attack ads.
He picked this week to say we need to "get money out of politics."
Sand's whole political brand is accountability. He's the state auditor, the guy who supposedly follows the money and calls out the powerful. Follow his money, and it leads to Hoffman.
"Rob Sand loves to talk about 'small-dollar donors,' but his campaign is bankrolled by coastal billionaires, wealthy insiders, and political elites," said Iowa GOP spokesperson Jade Cichy. "Now we learn he cashed a $250,000 check from an Epstein-connected megadonor. Will he return the money, or is this who he really answers to?"
He hasn't returned it.
Hoffman isn't just playing in Iowa. In Wisconsin, he gave $2.5 million to the state Democratic Party on October 20. The next day, the party sent nearly $2 million to David Crowley, its candidate for governor. A billionaire writes a check to the state party, the party passes it to the candidate the next day, and the candidate never has to explain where it came from.
Sand isn't the only Iowa Democrat taking big checks from out of state, either. He's also taken $50,000 from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Iowans pick between Sand and Republican Zach Lahn tomorrow. Sand has spent months telling them he's the watchdog. He's also spent nine months holding on to $250,000 from a man whose staff booked him overnight stays at Jeffrey Epstein's house.
Democrats want voters to think about Epstein when they think about Republicans. The money paying for that message came from a man whose name appears 2,600 times in the files.


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