Mr. A takes a certain pride in this little lie, the use of the word individuals instead of individual. Throughout the conspiracy, he would try to refer to Thiel as “my principals”—implying that there was some consortium of backers involved. Mr. A believed it was much less likely that Harder would demand to speak to them, to go over the head of this twenty-something, if it was much less clear whom he would be going to. And finally, the plurality of benefactors gave Mr. A a certain duplicative freedom. If money was slow, he could blame the delay on coordination problems. If he was unsure of
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