Larry Ellison vetted Rubio’s loyalty to 'Israel', leaks reveal
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As Ellison’s influence spreads across US media and tech, leaked emails expose how political loyalty to “Israel” shaped Rubio’s rise to national power.
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Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation, sits in the Oval Office of the White House as President Donald Trump signs an executive order, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Washington (AP)
Billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison personally vetted Marco Rubio’s loyalty to "Israel" before backing the Florida senator’s rise to national prominence, according to a trove of leaked emails reviewed by DropSite. The correspondence, never before reported, reveals close coordination between Ellison and senior Israeli officials to ensure Rubio would be a steadfast ally of the occupation in Washington.
The revelations come as Ellison and his family consolidate sweeping influence across US media and technology. Ellison is poised to play a key role in reshaping TikTok under a deal brokered by President Donald Trump, while his son, David Ellison, is expanding control over CBS, CNN, Paramount, and Warner Bros.
The family’s ambitions, critics say, mark an effort to dominate the flow of information and public opinion, particularly around "Israel."
“The Ellison family is cornering the market on attention and data the same way the Vanderbilts did railroads and the Rockefellers did oil,” Wired recently observed. That power is set to be tested in Trump’s proposed “New Gaza” free trade zone, a techno-dystopian project to be administered by a “Board of Peace” led jointly by Trump and Ellison’s longtime partner, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Rubio’s rise and Ellison’s vetting
The email cache, part of a 2024 leak by the hacktivist group Handala, shows Ellison and then-Israeli UN ambassador Ron Prosor arranging meetings in April 2015 to evaluate Rubio. At the time, Rubio had just launched his presidential bid, sharply criticizing President Obama’s “hostility to Israel.”
Prosor emailed Ellison on April 26, 2015, asking for a copy of Rubio’s speech and inquiring whether the senator would be a reliable pro-"Israel" candidate. Ellison replied days later after a private dinner with Rubio, “Great meeting with Marco Rubio. I set him up to meet with Tony Blair. Marco will be a great friend for Israel.”
Within weeks, Ellison hosted a fundraiser for Rubio at his California mansion and poured $5 million into a super PAC backing him. Rubio, in turn, became one of "Israel’s" most vocal champions in the 2016 presidential race and later, as secretary of state under Trump, spearheaded efforts to penalize critics of the occupation, including attempts to deport activists.
Emails verified, but sensitive
The emails, part of Prosor’s personal archive, were later obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit leak repository. Though stripped of metadata, the cache contains corroborating photos and documents verified as authentic by DropSite.
The archive ends in early 2016, suggesting it was exfiltrated before publication.
Neither Ellison, the State Department, nor the Israeli Embassy in Germany, where Prosor now serves, responded to requests for comment, as per the report.
Blair-Ellison nexus
The emails shed new light on Ellison’s financial backing of Blair’s Institute for Global Change, which has received more than $350 million from the Oracle founder. Joint retreats, shared staff, and coordinated projects have made the institute function as a quasi-extension of Oracle, according to a New Statesman and Lighthouse Reports investigation.
“It’s hard to get across just how deeply connected the two organizations are,” one former staffer said. “The meetings were like they’re part of the same organization.”
That partnership has positioned Ellison and Oracle to play a leading role in Gaza’s postwar reconstruction, as Kushner and Blair’s team finalize Trump’s plan for the enclave.
Ellison has been explicit about his vision: mass surveillance. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” he told investors in 2023.
'Weapons change over time'
Ellison’s devotion to "Israel" is well documented. At a 2014 fundraiser, he called supporting the Israeli military “the greatest honor.” In 2017, he gave Friends of the Israeli Army a record $16.6 million. Oracle CEO Safra Catz has also pushed pro-"Israel" influence campaigns, including a reality show idea about “Women of the IDF” to boost the occupation’s image in US culture.
The Rubio vetting is one piece of a broader Ellison strategy that fuses political patronage, media power, and tech infrastructure in service of "Israel". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has underscored the stakes. Speaking to pro-"Israel" influencers last year, he called TikTok’s acquisition “the most important purchase going on right now.”
“Weapons change over time... the most important ones are on social media,” Netanyahu said.
With Ellison now controlling TikTok’s US algorithm, and Rubio ensconced at the State Department, the billionaire’s long-running project to safeguard "Israel’s" interests in Washington appears to have come full circle.
