Gawker killer Peter Thiel may try to buy what's left of Gawker

Peter Thiel is still out to get Gawker.
 By 
Patrick Kulp
 on 
Gawker killer Peter Thiel may try to buy what's left of Gawker
Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Peter Thiel may not be done with his revenge quest against Gawker.

The vindictive tech billionaire's lawyers filed a motion this week arguing that he has been "unfairly excluded" from ongoing bidding for the defunct news site's archives and brand name, BuzzFeed reported.

The filing would clear the way for a possible sale of Gawker to Thiel, at which point he would be free to scrub any or all of the old articles that remain online, including the infamous 2007 post that outed him as gay and sparked his secret years-long plot to destroy the outlet.

Those machinations were first made public last year when Thiel was revealed to be bankrolling Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the former digital media empire for publishing the wrestler's sex tape.

The $140-million verdict from that case bankrupted Gawker Media, and while Univision bought its stable of other properties, including Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Deadspin, the company's namesake site has remained dormant as its lawyers have hammered out terms for a potential sale in bankruptcy court.

Thiel has claimed that he supports a free press but called Gawker a "singularly sociopathic bully."

"It is ridiculous to claim that journalism requires indiscriminate access to private people's sex lives," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed last fall.

He also seemed to suggest that valuable pieces of the site's legacy will live on.

"As for Gawker, whatever good work it did will continue in the future, and suggesting otherwise would be an insult to its writers and to readers," Thiel wrote.

Thiel first made his fortune as a co-founder of PayPal and then as an early investor in Facebook, where he still sits on the board.

But the eccentric venture capitalist's vocal support for Donald Trump has since somewhat alienated him in Silicon Valley. Most recently, startup incubator Y-Combinator cut ties with Thiel earlier this week for unknown reasons.

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Patrick Kulp

Patrick Kulp is a Business Reporter at Mashable. Patrick covers digital advertising, online retail and the future of work. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in political science and economics, he previously worked at the Pacific Coast Business Times.

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