[zmitri]

I was commenting based on my experience that 1) VC firms actually do ask you for permission to run background checks on you, look you up online, and know a fair bit about you 2) We run background checks on everyone we hire, and its fairly easy to do, because I believe it would be irresponsible not to.

I don't think there is one real error here as you put it, but it's been made public he was warned about him before and people he worked with would refuse to go to his properties when invited and told him why (citation: https://medium.com/@EthanZ/on-me-and-the-media-lab-715bfc707...).

[news_to_me]

Thanks, I think this is what I was missing. Failing to google a donor is a pretty bad oversight, but I think attributable to basically negligence. Ignoring the advice of your peers is more egregious, which looks like what happened here.