Ex-Reddit big hit over Ghis
Turned blind eye at party
The former CEO of Reddit drew criticism this week after revealing that she and several others at a ritzy 2011 Silicon Valley Christmas party attended by Ghislaine Maxwell “knew” or “suspected” that she was allegedly supplying underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein but did not call her out.
Ellen Pao said in a Twitter post that Maxwell was at the party hosted by Kleiner Perkins, a venture-capital giant where she worked as a partner.
“She was at the Kleiner holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a photo taken with her,” Pao wrote in a tweet on Monday.
“We knew about her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the ‘cool’ people who managed the tightly controlled guest list.”
Twitter users slammed Pao — who joined Reddit two years later — for not saying anything about the guest list for years after the party.
“Sorry but it sounds like you were fine with it too,” one user responded.
“Wait what? Everyone in the room knew she was a child sex trafficker… and no one in the room objected to her presence?” another wrote.
“Sounds like you’re associated with some pretty cool people,” a third user responded.
Pao set her Twitter to private after the criticism, but later lifted the setting.
In a second tweet, she clarified that media reports had implicated Maxwell in sex trafficking — but the accused madam had not been charged criminally at the time.
“To be clear, the press had described her as supplying underage girls for sex, but she had not been charged so I guess it would be more accurate to say we ‘suspected’ v ‘knew,’ ” she wrote.
When asked by another Twitter user if everyone at the party was OK with Maxwell being at the bash, she responded that the employees who made up the guest list were fine with her attending.
The “super exclusive” party was attended by tech-industry giants and former politicians, including former Vice President Al Gore, ex-MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and former Twitter engineering head Mike Abbott, according to Business Insider.