Top Democratic strategist pushed reporters to consider ‘staged’ shooting

“…The adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, apologized for his remarks after Semafor published this story, and said his email laying out his claims was “drafted without consultation from team members or allies.”

Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, whose net worth is reportedly $2.5 billion, joked at last week’s billionaire confab in Sun Valley that he wished he had made Trump “an actual martyr.” Sunday, he said on X that he was referring to “accountability to the rule of law” and that he’s “horrified and saddened” by the attack.

The scale of Hoffman’s political donations isn’t public but Mehlhorn said on a recent private conference call that “Reid and I have invested nine figures of our own money to prevent Trump from getting back into office.” (The money appears to be largely Hoffman’s.)

In an email Saturday at 7:34 pm that appeared to be addressed to sympathetic journalists, and which was also sent to Semafor, Mehlhorn wrote that one “possibility — which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally — is that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash. This is a classic Russian tactic, such as when Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power. Others who have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefitting from the backlash include Hamas on October 7. If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”

The other possibility, Mehlhorn wrote, “is that some crazy anti-Trumper in this chaotic moment decided to assassinate the former President.”…”