Trump adviser Peter Thiel might buy Gawker after helping shut it down

Billionaire venture capitalist and Trump adviser Peter Thiel might purchase Gawker.com after he helped shut down the website.

BuzzFeed News reported that Thiel’s lawyers filed a motion in court Wednesday, claiming that he was being unfairly excluded from being able to bid on the website’s archives.

Thiel funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker in 2015, which eventually led to the website’s bankruptcy. He has also served as an adviser to President Trump.

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Thiel’s lawyers argued that he has been blocked from receiving information about the bid to buy Gawker, according to BuzzFeed News. Whoever purchases the website will also have access to its archives, meaning they would be able to delete the past stories.

The lawyers alleged that Thiel’s team had reached out to Gawker about purchasing the site, but that they were ignored.

The attorneys requested that the process of selling Gawker be paused “until the issues concerning the Plan Administrator’s blockade of Mr. Thiel as a bidder are resolved,” according to BuzzFeed News.

“By wrongly excluding Mr. Thiel, the most able and logical purchaser, from the sale process on specious grounds… the Plan Administrator will only depress the value to be achieved in any sale,” the lawyers claimed in the filing.

A spokesperson for Thiel declined to comment to BuzzFeed News, as did the administrators for the Gawker sale.