Harris campaign officials hold event with Reid Hoffman

In a Friday news report, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, criticized for explicitly saying on national television that Kamala Harris should fire Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan if she becomes president, tried to backtrack. “I have never spoken to VP Harris about Lina Khan, or even the FTC at all. I have never demanded, nor would I dare demand, that VP Harris fire Lina Khan if she becomes president,” Hoffman said in a lengthy post on X. He also pledged his support for Harris regardless of her views on Khan, and even praised Khan for her work fighting the junk fees and non-compete agreements that have appeared in Harris’ campaign speeches.

This was certainly a better approach for Hoffman than claiming that he was actually two people, a donor and an “expert” who gave political advice. That was met with exactly the skepticism it deserved. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of politics knows that a major donor with extended access to a political candidate increases the chances that his or her policy preferences will become reality.

We now know that Hoffman maintains fairly close access to this particular presidential candidate and her campaign. The invitation, obtained by Perspective previously unannounced, Business Leaders for Harris is asking to join a Zoom call with Hoffman and two members of the Harris campaign staff, policy director Grace Landrieu and deputy campaign chief Sergio Gonzalez.

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The meeting, scheduled for Monday afternoon, invites business leaders “to talk about race and what we can do together,” noting that “Vice President Kamala Harris has an impressive track record of working with the private sector, including supporting efforts to create opportunities for companies of all sizes.”

While there have been a number of Zoom political rallies in the two weeks since Harris entered the presidential campaign, raising millions of dollars for the candidate, most of them were grassroots-led and featured celebrities or surrogates from Harris. This conversation with business leaders includes two senior Harris campaign officials, as well as Hoffman, who has recently faced criticism about whether he uses his access as a donor to shape public policy.

Harris’ top campaign staff, who held a Zoom call with the leader of the movement to oust Khan, did not allay concerns that big financial interests are backing the vice president and her aides, nor her considerable ambivalence on economic policy more broadly.

A query to Hoffman’s venture capital fund Greylock was also not returned. Harris spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said Perspective after it was reported that Business Leaders for Harris Zoom was not an official campaign event and that campaign activists had attended other coalition events that were not organized by the campaign.

Also joining the conversation is Deanne Millison, former chief economic adviser to the vice president. Millison, now at the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, was a legislative staffer for Senator Harris, legislative director for Rahm Emanuel when he was mayor of Chicago, and a corporate lawyer. She leads an eight-week discussion group at Georgetown called “Corporations as Advocates: The Role Corporations Play in Advancing Social Issues.”

Harris’s campaign is barely two weeks old, but her nascent campaign has many ties to corporate interests. Harris’ brother-in-law, former senior Justice Department official Tony West, is taking a leave of absence from his position as general counsel for Uber, which is currently suing the U.S. Department of Labor over its rules for classifying independent contractors, to work off the books on the campaign. West is seen as a key campaign adviser. The law firm of Eric Holder, who was West’s boss at the Justice Department, has been tasked with vetting the vice presidential candidates; Holder has represented Merck, Chiquita, Purdue Pharma, Swiss bank UBS and Uber, and his law firm Covington & Burling represents several major financial institutions. Covington & Burling is also the lead attorney on Amazon’s antitrust case against the Justice Department. In another antitrust case being handled by the Justice Department, Google has hired Karen Dunn, who advised Harris on debate strategy as she prepared to face off against J.D. Vance before President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, as its lead litigator.

Gonzalez, who joined Reid Hoffman’s campaign, has served as the vice president’s campaign strategist for several years and recently took over as The Washington Post called a “more senior role” in the campaign. Landrieu has worked at the National Economic Council since January 2023 and at the Domestic Policy Council before that. She is a holdover from the Biden campaign.

Hoffman has given $10 million to a super PAC that currently supports Harris. It has been reported that he plans to co-host a fundraiser for Harris, as well as what has been called a “Silicon Valley fundraising swing.” Hoffman is also one of more than 700 venture capitalists who have signed on to “VCs for Kamala,” seen as a backlash against the earlier surge in tech industry support for former President Donald Trump.

Mainstream Democrats PAC, which is backed by Hoffman and often teams up with big-money cryptocurrency and pro-Israel organizations to oppose progressives in Democratic primaries, has raised about $3.4 million this cycle and spent close to $1.5 million so far.

The clear call to fire Khan has drawn broad opposition from virtually every ideological faction of the party, from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the left to Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-N.V.), the leader who is facing a difficult re-election campaign, in the middle. Several unions have defended Khan; at least one union leader personally told Harris in a phone interview that Khan must remain in office to continue his job, Perspective he learned.

One nonprofit political advocacy group, Grab Your Wallet Alliance, publicly parted ways with Hoffman, who was one of its top funders. “This is not the time for tech billionaires to air their grievances,” Shannon Coulter, CEO of Grab Your Wallet, said in a statement.

Policy advocates questioned the self-serving nature of Hoffman and others who openly expressed preferences that are usually expressed behind closed doors. “That makes it nearly impossible for Harris (to carry out Hoffman’s orders) without appearing to pander to donor interests.” New York Times he wrote. But that didn’t stop the Harris campaign from collaborating with Hoffman on events.

In his X post, Hoffman said, “When it comes to Lina Khan, I think her continued efforts to dismantle companies are undermining America’s innovation economy. I spoke out because the impact on how we invest in and build the next generation of entrepreneurial companies is real—as is her attempt to limit how effectively big tech companies can compete globally.” No mention was made of the fact that Khan’s FTC is investigating Microsoft, where Hoffman sits on the board, and Inflection AI, an investment from his VC firm Greylock, for violating antitrust laws. Microsoft hired most of Inflection’s staff and paid the startup $650 million in an “acquisition” deal that was not disclosed to antitrust regulators as a merger.

This article has been updated with a statement from a Harris campaign spokesperson.