[danso]

> I don't see how what Thiel did is any different than when an organization like the ACLU, NAACP, or EFF gets behind a court case that aligns with their political cause

What lawsuit are you thinking of in which the ACLU/NAACP/EFF/etc privately backed a litigant?

[slg]

Here [1] is the first result on Google and it is a twofer. You might argue that the ACLU and EFF are publicizing their involvement, but I would argue that is because publicity of their fight is part of their political agenda. Thiel's political motivation was privacy so it makes sense that he wouldn't actively publicize his involvement.

Also while we may know that these organizations are funding this legal battle, we don't know who is ultimately funding these organizations. It is certainly possible that a random billionaire donated money and earmarked it for this specific cause. Would it be more acceptable to you if Thiel created some dummy non-profit, donated money to it, and then had that organization publicly back the lawsuit? That likely would have had the same end result and might have even nabbed Thiel a decent tax break.

[1] - https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-aclu-media-conference...

[danso]

> We don't know who is ultimately funding these organizations.

990s give some hint, but yes, individual donors aren't revealed (as they are for campaign contributions). OK, but the fact remains that we can see these orgs have, among other things, a bureaucracy. Let's say Soros (or insert your favorite villain here) is the sole funder behind ACLU. The ACLU provides cover for him, but the tradeoff is that there are more moving parts (i.e. the people in the organization) and less efficiency in action. And so this tactic is probably a lot more trouble than it's worth.

In terms of your hypothetical situation of Thiel creating a dummy non-profit org -- is your question rhetorical? Sure, I guess it would "please" the Thiel detractors because doing such a thing properly takes a considerable amount of time and planning (you can't just make up names to add to your 990, for example). And if you were to rush the scheme -- well, as you've already pointed out, that would put Thiel at risk of being nabbed for something tax-fraud related.

Does this help to answer one of your earlier questions (sorry, too lazy to climb the thread tree to look it up) about why some folks have more of an issue with an agenda-driven individual than with an agenda-driven organization? It's hard for an organization to exist as a public entity without stating some kind of agenda. The agenda of an individual is much more opaque. And while it's true that an organization can be completely subverted and controlled by a powerful private individual, there's a lot of work to set that up, and a lot of disadvantages even if you're successful. Hence, it is considered less of a potential problem.

[ng12]

Is the fact that he did it privately the issue? I don't see why it should be: why would you have to identify where your lawyer's retainer comes from?

[danso]

The main issue of concern seemed to be about powerful individuals -- with individual agendas -- being able to wield heavy influence in other parties' legal processes. Being secret about it is not illegal, just made the issue more uncomfortable:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/business/dealbook/peter-t...

> Roy D. Simon, a professor emeritus of legal ethics at Hofstra University School of Law, suggested that the practice has helped “level the playing field” by providing resources for people to mount cases against big institutions that would be impossible otherwise.

http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/thiel-gawker/

> Perhaps, this could be solved by disclosure: Isn’t it in everyone’s interest to know when people like Thiel are behind a lawsuit? As it turns out, no one has to say a thing. According to Burford Capital, a litigation company whose clients include banks and hedge funds, the law is “perfectly clear … there is no obligation to disclose litigation financing arrangements.”

FWIW, I checked up on the latest news regarding Thiel vs. Gawker. They are currently in bankruptcy proceedings. In June, the court agreed to let Gawker subpoena Thiel and do discovery on Thiel's relationship with Hogan's lawyer:

http://archive.is/HXvDm

> Judge Stuart Bernstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan ruled Tuesday that Gawker has established cause for examining Mr. Thiel’s relationship with the lawyer, Charles Harder. Gawker seeks evidence, if any exists, that Mr. Thiel conspired with Mr. Harder to destroy the media company, which could be used to build a lawsuit against the billionaire venture capitalist.

IANAL, and I haven't read anything that has explained the best-case scenario for Gawker, in terms of what evidence it would have to find, and what actions it could take. But apparently there was some merit to Gawker's claim that Thiel's role was problematic.

A Buzzfeed reporter who is covering the case tweeted that Thiel potentially could be damaged by this Stanford Politics story: https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/935214376155365378

One of the supposedly problematic passages from the Stanford Politics article:

> On Oct. 28, 2015, several months before Thiel was revealed to be the funder of a lawsuit that bankrupted renegade media company Gawker, which had covered his political activities negatively and outed him as gay in 2007, the Stanford grad (BA ’89, JD ’92) giddily told several Stanford undergraduates in a private meeting at his San Francisco home about his imminent destruction of what he called a “universally reviled organization.” Four undergrads present at the meeting confirmed the story, a seemingly out-of-character — however vague — disclosure from the quite private Thiel. But why would he divulge such a thing to a small group of students? And why was he meeting with them in the first place?

Assuming that the SP's reporting on this is accurate, Thiel seems to have been way too overconfident in his private meetups with Stanford students. Again, this may end up being nothing in terms of Gawker's last-ditch legal fight, but for Thiel to gloat to students about his secret legal actions seems really dumb and careless. Hopefully (for his sake), he didn't say much more than that to Stanford students about the Gawker case.

[ng12]

> The main issue of concern seemed to be about powerful individuals -- with individual agendas -- being able to wield heavy influence in other parties' legal processes.

Why is this an issue? It happens all the time in the other direction -- large corporations who hire leagues of lawyers to draw out proceedings for even the most open-and-shut cases. As quoted elsewhere in this discussion:

The sad take-away from Hogan v Gawker isn't that a millionaire can spend money on a whim to exert justice where he so desires, it's that you need that level of money to seek justice in the first place.

[danso]

When you ask, "Why is this an issue?", what do you mean by "issue"? Because by "issue", I don't mean anything more concrete than people are bothered (to various degrees). Why exactly? I can't answer for them but people often have different reactions to actions initiated by individuals vs groups.

I provided one example where Thiel being an individual has affected the Hogan v. Gawker legal proceedings. Gawker was able to convince the court that Thiel's relationship to Charles Harder, Hogan's lawyer, was worth investigating, and Thiel/Harder fought hard to block that. Is this something that happens to groups like the ACLU? Maybe, again, IANAL.