Peter Thiel: Billionaire confirms he is bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s Gawker lawsuit

'Gawker has been a singularly terrible bully,' Thiel said

Thiel once described Gawker as 'the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda' and was outed as gay by the publication

Peter Thiel has confirmed long-rumoured speculation he has been secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media.

Hogan sued the media company for invasion of privacy after it published a sex tape of the wrestler and was awarded $140 million in his lawsuit in March.

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, the billionaire tech entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal accused the publication of bullying and said his decision to help Hogan was motivated by deterrence. Thiel said he is supporting at least one other lawsuit against the digital media company.

Thiel once described Gawker as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda” and was outed as gay by the publication.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” he told the paper. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

Thiel said Gawker published articles that were “very painful and paralyzing for people who were targeted”, adding, “I thought it was worth fighting back.”

Thiel argued that the majority of people they target do not have the finances to defend themselves. "Even someone like Terry Bollea [Hulk Hogan] who is a millionaire and famous and a successful person didn’t quite have the resources to do this alone."

“The way I’ve thought about this is that Gawker has been a singularly terrible bully,” he added. “In a way, if I didn’t think Gawker was unique, I wouldn’t have done any of this.”

Gawker is appealing the decision. The company’s founder, Nick Denton, suspected the lawsuit was being funded by a third party but didn't know for sure until now.

“Just because Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley billionaire,” Denton said, "his opinion does not trump our millions of readers who know us for routinely driving big news stories including Hillary Clinton's secret email account, Bill Cosby's history with women, the mayor of Toronto as a crack smoker, Tom Cruise's role within Scientology ... and just this month the hidden power of Facebook to determine the news you see.”

Thiel is a libertarian and is a pledged delegate for Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican National Convention.