America First megadonor Peter Thiel seeks citizenship from Mediterranean island: report

Bob Brigham
October 15, 2022

Gage Skidmore.

One of the largest individual donors in the 2022 midterm elections is seeking to obtain citizenship in Malta, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

The newspaper based its report on documents it had viewed and "three people with knowledge of the matter."

"Mr. Thiel, 55, is in the process of acquiring at least his third passport even as he expands his financial influence over American politics," the newspaper reported. "Since backing Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the technology investor has become one of the largest individual donors in the midterm elections next month, spending more than $30 million on more than a dozen right-wing Congressional candidates who have decried globalization and pledged to put America first."

Thiel also has a New Zealand passport.

"There is no obvious tax benefit to Mr. Thiel to gaining Maltese citizenship, lawyers and immigration experts said, though wealthy Saudi, Russian and Chinese citizens sometimes seek a passport from the island nation for European Union access and to hedge against social or political turmoil at home," The Times reported. "What is clear is that a Maltese passport would give Mr. Thiel an escape hatch from the United States if his spending doesn’t change the country to his liking."

Thiel has been a major backer of the U.S. Senate campaigns of Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio.

"Both candidates have espoused a form of nationalism that, in part, blames globalization and leaders’ involvement in international affairs for American stagnation," the newspaper reported. "Mr. Thiel has endorsed that worldview with his money and in speeches, including one at the National Conservatism Conference last year where he called nationalism 'a corrective' to the 'brain-dead, one-world state' of globalism."

Read the full report.