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blockbuster revelation by tech billionaire Peter Thiel admitting he is behind a campaign against Gawker including that monster lawsuit by Hulk Hogan ABC's Rebecca Jarvis is here with new details good morning Rebecca hi Robyn good morning to you that's right billionaire Peter Thiel who made his fortune creating PayPal and as one of the very first investors in Facebook is speaking out sharing details about why he spent millions of dollars financing Hulk Hogan's winning case against Gawker Media Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealing to the New York Times over night why he shelled out about 10 million dollars for the courtroom takedown of Gawker by Hogan whose real name is Terry Bollea after Gawker published the 2007 article outing teal is gay he told the times I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the Public Interest teal putting a plan in place to secretly fun cases in hopes of crippling the website the PayPal founder saying it's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence explaining why he decided to help they usually attack less prominent far less wealthy people that simply can't defend themselves even someone like Terry Bollea who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn't quite have the resources to do this alone well they took the wrong guy this time Hogan spoke about his invasion of privacy lawsuit and huge win with Lindsey Janus in March I knew we were doing what was right and even if we would have lost it would have been good because everybody would have known what Gawker was all about because I expose them and what they do and on how they look at the world which to me is very very scary overnight a Florida judge denying Gawker's request for a retrial as it fights to reverse that 140 million dollar reward for Hogan in a statement Nick Denton the Gawker founder who was also personally named in the Hogan suit told the New York Times just because Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley billionaire his opinion does not Trump our millions of readers Robin Rebecca thank you were going to turn now to ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams you talked about the some time ago we didn't know who the person was yeah this is something were to see more of um I don't think we're gonna see a lot of it meaning you're talking about someone who is so rich going after an independent publisher right so that those are the key factors here that is sort of unprecedented meaning you've got these businesses that invest in lawsuits right there basically betting on the outcome they're saying I'm gonna bet X amount of dollars because I think the verdicts gonna be that much more this is totally different because this is personal yeah he's doing this because he wants to bring Gawker down and on the one hand there's nothing wrong or illegal with that per se and yet on the other hand I'll tell you someone who owns a series of websites it's scary to have this idea that someone could be determined to bring you down but as Rebecca said in her report this in some ways levels the playing field there a lot of people who want to bring a suit and have and it didn't affect the outcome I mean the fact that he paid for his legal fees didn't affect the outcome it didn't affect the jury's verdict per se but if what if the report is true it did impact some of their legal strategy meaning their legal strategy to remove one of the counts against Gawker so their insurance company wouldn't defend them right that's actually changing the legal strategy based on the fact that they've got someone who's bankrolling the whole thing so it doesn't really matter how much money they're gonna get out of it as long as they inflict enough pain on Gawker yeah so that is one way indeed impact the legal strategy here fascinating fascinating case still in the appeals process oh and that's the thing the appeals process could cost another millions and millions of dollars but the fact that we now know about teal it's not going to not gonna change the outcome but we it's gonna make us think about okay all right there thank you fascinating exercise it sure it you