Group Backed by Microsoft’s Reid Hoffman Accused of Thuggery

Last month it was revealed that a group of tech and investment billionaires under the name Flannery Associates, which includes Microsoft director Reid Hoffman (pictured above), had been secretly buying up thousands of acres of land between San Francisco and Sacramento, for the purpose of building their own utopian “green” city. The group has reportedly accumulated approximately 52,000 acres, which apparently isn’t enough, as Flannery is suing a group of farmers for alleged “price fixing” and overcharging for additional land the elites want to acquire.

In response, the defendant farmers have called out Flannery (aka “California Forever”) for their alleged aggressive tactics. Business Insider reports:

In a court filing this week, farmers in Solano County said Flannery Associates used pressure tactics to acquire land for the new city, including evicting farmers who refused to negotiate and using expensive litigation to force residents to sell up.

 

The defendants, including some families who say they have been farming the land for upward of 100 years, have…accused Flannery of “hounding” local residents, canceling leases, and playing farmers against one another.

 

They compare Flannery’s actions to “mobster tactics,” citing Californian Congressman John Garamendi. In one instance, the lawsuit said that Flannery attempted to purchase a plot of land owned by eight groups of descendants of the same family.

 

When all but one of the groups refused to sell, Flannery adopted a “divide and conquer” strategy by acquiring the one-eighth share and suing the other owners, using the threat of expensive and lengthy litigation to force them into selling, the suit said.

The tactics are reminiscent of other approaches in Hoffman’s bag of tricks, which enable him to preserve a layer of deniability while other front people or groups do the dirty work. This is whether he is raising funds for MIT with (now dead) pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, funding leftist disinformation campaigns, his caustic and sexist comments about women, or his unhealthy obsession with the political and legal defeat of former President Donald Trump.

The imprudent Hoffman is unfit to serve on the board of a prestigious and widely-used tech company like Microsoft, and as shareholders, NLPC has called for him to be removed as a director. Two other companies where he is a director, Joby Aviation and Aurora Innovation, should consider taking the same step.