Dmitri Mehlhorn, the top political adviser to tech entrepreneur and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, pushed reporters to consider Saturday’s attempted assassination on Donald Trump as “encouraged and maybe even staged,” according to a leaked email, Semafor reports.

In an email sent to journalists at 7:34 p.m. Saturday, just over an hour after Trump was shot onstage during his campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Mehlhorn flagged what he called a “possibility” that “feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally.”

That “possibility,” he tells reporters in the email, is that “this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

“This is a classic Russian tactic, such as when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin killed 300 civilians in 1999 and blamed it on terrorists to ride the backlash to winning power,” Mehlhorn continues. “Others who have embraced this tactic of committing raw evil and then benefitting from the backlash include Hamas on Oct. 7. If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”

This is not the first of Hoffman-linked efforts to disseminate left-leaning narratives.

In 2021, Hoffman backed Courier Newsroom, a corporation that aims to “tackle disinformation by funding openly partisan newsrooms,” Axios reported.

Billionaire financier George Soros is another financial backer of Courier Newsroom.

Specifically, Axios reported, their investments propelled Courier Newsroom’s expansion, allowing the Tara McGowan-led operation to publish pieces promoting liberal causes while attacking conservatives.

Ironically, Courier Newsroom claims: “We will always provide proper context in our reporting to help ensure we don’t continue the spread of misinformation or disinformation.”

Semafor also reported that Mehlhorn, Hoffman’s top adviser, previously said this on a private conference call: “Reid [Hoffman] and I have invested nine figures of our own money to prevent Trump from getting back into office.”

Puck News reported that Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, joked at last week’s Allen & Co. conference for tech entrepreneurs that he wishes he had made Trump “an actual martyr.”

The outlet reported that in an exchange with former Pay Pal CEO Peter Thiel, Hoffman said: “Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr.”

As a result, after the attempt Saturday evening to kill Trump, the National Legal and Policy Center on Sunday called on Hoffman to resign his seat on the board of directors of Microsoft Corp. or be removed by the board.

NLPC also called for Hoffman to be removed from the Defense Innovation Board, a body organized under federal law to recommend technological modernization for the military. That panel is chaired by businessman Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and presidential candidate.

The National Legal and Policy Center describes itself as a conservative nonprofit that monitors and reports on the ethics of public officials, supporters of liberal causes, and labor unions in America.

Rob Bluey and Ken McIntyre contributed to this report, which was modified within hours of publication to include more details.