(9/27/24) EXCLUSIVE: Ken Klippenstein BANNED By Elon For JD Vance Dossier

were refusing to publish it now. They cited two primary reasons. One was because it was a hacked document, and the other was that in some estimations it was deemed to be not newsworthy. Well, Ken was able to get his

hand on that dossier published it to his substack. In fact, I can pull this up while we're talking about it, so that people could judge for themselves whether or not it was in fact newsworthy and see what sorts of concerns the Trump campaign had internally about jd Vance and his selection onto the ticket as Donald Trump's vice presidential pick. So Ken joins us now to talk about that, but also to talk about the fallout after posting this dossier.

He's now been banned on Twitter. Elon Musk has gone after him, personally describing the publishing of this dossier completely unredacted as quote evil. So we want to talk about all angles of this this topic. Ken, thank you so much for spending some time with us this morning. Could it be with you, Yeah, of course. So first, just take me through your thinking why you came down in a different place on publishing this dossier than other news outlets did.

relying on their paraphrase. And an initial concern I had, having worked in media for a number of years now and seeing how when media tries to make the judgment about what people are going to be interested in and misreads what the general public might be interested in because they're, you know, overwhelmingly focused on other things. I think that

turned out to be true in this case. I encourage people to go and read the actual document and compare it with the articles that were said to have paraphrased it and which the media was saying, Look, we've already basically talked about what's interesting there, what's the you know, what's the what's the deal here? Look at the actual document.

Compare that with reporting, and you're going to notice a gulf between those two things, a huge difference in terms of this specific parts of the document that were never mentioned in any stories, and just the tone of the campaign. To me, the most interesting thing is not the disclosures looking at this as something like the steel dosier that's going to have all this salacious detail that was never what this was. What's interesting about this is the meta

textual point of that. It gives you insight into what the campaign thinks is problematic about VANCE and what's interesting about it is overwhelmingly the theme that they focus on being his liability is what makes him trumpy. It's like the maga dimension to his character that they seem uneasy with, which is funny and interesting because it shows that the

party is in conflict with Trump. They both need him to win and they're uneasy with They're uneasy with with his policies, particularly the ones that tend towards isolationism and protectionism.

they flagged as like potential political problems for him. And the two things that I found interesting was number one, as you're laying out, the two big areas that they thought were of vulnerability for Vance were number one, his overwhelming past criticism of Donald Trump. And I do think that that turned out to be somewhat of a focus

of conversation, somewhat of a liability for him. And there's chapter and verse of him going through, you know, all the ways that he used to hate Donald Trump and think that he was unfit and believe his sexual assault accusers, and all of those sorts of things, right, which you probably many people will be familiar with the what jd Vance has said about Donald Trump in the past because

of mainstream coverage. The other bucket was him being a non traditional conservative and having views that for example, you know, talking about how he thought Democrats had some policies that would be favorable to the working class, how he had said some favorable things about unions, for example, and they saw that as a liability, which is interesting in and

of itself. But the other piece that I found interesting, Ken is what wasn't in this dossier, which is that I wondered if they had surfaced some of the comments

that have genuinely been a problem for jd. Vance, which is like his whole you know, his whole motif on childless cat ladies, and similarly, you know, situated commentary about women and what he thinks role for women should be, and this very sort of narrow and contemptuous view that he has of women who don't fit the prescribed roles that he would like to.

So I mean that's interesting in one regard because there have been a question about whether Donald Trump really realized all of these things about him, whether he would have put him on the ticket if he knew he had said all of these things, And also interesting because you realize how these standard issue Republican consultant consulting firms which would have been behind this type of this type of dossier, how blind they were to what the actual liabilities would be for him in this camp exactly.

Republican Convention, but the Democratic Convention collectively. They mentioned the word healthcare twice during the entire speeches, and in both references they had essentially nothing to say about it. And then you look at national security basically like slightly more to say about that, but still basically nothing. I mean

it's really hard to define what they're doing. And so when you have a document like this that gives you some sense of not just what the attitudes of the party are, but I think too why they're so quiet about a number of things, because they're uneasy with their position on a lot of different things, including on things which it wouldn't be it's sort of counterintuitive that they are.

So if this document, as was suggested by the media, oh it's just going to be based on polling or whatever, then they're going to talk about overwhelmingly the cat lady stuff that you're saying. Because because gender is a huge issue of it's a huge problem Republican's face. It relates to the abortion question and is central to I think their main liability going into this election post Dobbs decision

of the overturn of Row. But instead they're interested in these positions that you know, it could be characterized to be definitely popular among the you know, isolationist wing of the Republican base, probably so among reporters generally, and they acted as though it's a liability. That tells you that they're not primarily concerned with public opinion. They have other concerns I mean, I'm guessing where their money comes from.

But you know, there's also a quality to these, you know, official campaign like vetting documents where it doesn't take into account any of the quote unquote X factor, like whatever it is about Jade Vance that just judging by the polls and the fact that he has the lowest favorability rating of you know, the set of the four Kamala tim Walls, Donald Trump and him, he has the lowest

favorability ratings. There's no real putting your finger on whatever that lack of an X factor or whatever, the off putting nature of him, which I think is tied up in some of this like weird childless cat lady type comments that is completely absent from this as well, which to me was an interesting insight too.

weird source materials from sketchy people all the time. You factor in their motivation, but if it's legitimate information, the public deserves to see it. So we supported that, but a lot of liberals didn't. And so one of the arguments is, okay, well, the news outlets were pressured by liberals to change their ways, and they basically quote unquote learned their lesson and decided this time around they were not going to publish hacked materials that may have come

from an Iranian government actor. And again, we'll put a pin in that and discuss that more later. What is your sense of why the handling this time appears to have been so different from the handling back in twenty sixteen.

of election interference from the Russians. Now, if you actually break down the data and look at that, I don't think there's a lot of evidence. Yeah, not the case, but that was the vibe and because of it, and when the media affirms that, then they lock themselves into that rationale. And so then when you have another foreign interference case like this, well we've already gone pot committed for this narrative before, so I guess we have to

follow through with it. And in the next case, and that happens to be about a Republican It's very strange. It's very surreal to see these publications Democracy dies in darkness. I mean some of the most stridently you know, liberal and resistance figures being like, no, we can't use this thing about JD. Vance. It's like surreal. I didn't this is completely assided from why I published it because I just generally think if something's about a public official and

it relates to policy, like that's fair game. But it's just bizarre to watch. As to the second dimension that I mentioned before, I think that that is much more in sitious one that's not being talked about very much. There has been, and I've reported on this on my sub stack the last five months or so that we run it on the obsession with foreign influence campaigns, including disinformation. They have up new offices across the federal government to

focus on this purported problem. Now, I don't deny that it exists. I don't deny that the Iranians, the Russians in the Chinese are doing this. I take the intelligence communities assessments at their word, at least in at least in broad strokes. But the efficacy of those programs there's almost no evidence to suggest that they're broadly efficacious.

oh god, what do we do? And so I really think that part of part of this, which is not talked about, is that when the government obsesses with foreign influence campaigns, and you saw it in the case of this ridiculous those those Tenet media guys, and I mean, it's just so ridiculous. Yeah, And obviously I'm fine with DJ prosecuting that. Nope, I mean that makes sense. But you look at the actual numbers of the videos and you guys get more views than them in like a week,

it's than they did in an entire year. I mean, these are not huge operations. And again I would like for them not to happen, but to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, you know, we've got to stop doing news and get the public access to things for fear of this abstract thing, which again there is no evidence that it has swung in a presidential election before. There just isn't right, and there's there's a lack of evidence that it's swung elections down ballot either.

And so you can both think it exists and think it's bad, but then have a sort of rational and proportional response to it which doesn't include this just freak out about it, you know, just upending American society, Like that's not easy to do our own politicians can't propagandize us effectively. Do you know how hard that is?

that's that's sort of the bar and the standard. And I think that's you know, that's what you've articulated as well, just very quickly, you know, is it your sense put this up on the screen while you're talking, but is it your sense that these were documents that were hacked by the Iranian government? That's been sort of suggested but not definitively, you know, asserted. The Trump campaign certainly seems

to suggest that. We also just got this news that federal grand juries indicted multiple Iranian nationals for their involvement in a plot to hack and steal non public materials from form President Trump's campaign. Could be that what you receive this JD vance, you know, vetting document, could have been among those non public materials that were hacked by Iranian nationals. What is your sense or what is your view of that?

they won't say which. There's no specifics as to which articles, which hacks, which you know what specific information, and so that would certainly apply to all of this and what

I'm working with. So it makes sense. But the truth is, we just don't know, and we have to be careful with it, not just in the abstract, because going back to twenty sixteen, for example, there were Russian state backed hacks of democratic information, but there was at the exact same time contemporaneously a hack of Hillary Clinton's emails by just some random I'm trying to remember what country it was,

Romanian national. I think he went by the Hanngele Guchafer And it came out that he was just some dude that was just like didn't like Hillary Clinton. It was like, I'm going to hack intor emails that he did it, and any reasonable observer at that time I probably would have just assumed, Yeah, it's probably the Russians, because that's what they're doing too. But the world is complicated and chaotic and there's so many different things, so, you know,

gun to my head, would I guess it's er Anians? Yeah, I would guess that, but I don't know, and I'm careful to say that I don't know, and I resent that when you were careful to try to get the facts right, people like, oh, are you trying to defend your Antians? No, we just don't know, and I'm trying to be careful with that, you know, Yeah.

the X rules. Due to a user report, specifically for violating our rules against posting private information. You may not publish or post other people's private information without their express

authorization and permission. So they're asserting that they took down your account and by the way, banned people from even linking to your substack because of effectively of doxing you published this entire report, including some information about jd Vance, including a portion of his social Security number, an email address,

and a home address. So, first of all, you know, just give me your reaction if you think that's really the reason why twitter Is has suspended your account and is banning the linking to this report, and also your rationale for why you didn't take out those private personal details.

what we did, which it included what you said. But first of all, I want to point to something that was really weird and interesting in that screenshot that you showed viewers describing my suspension from Twitter. So it of course includes the link to the Vance dossier, but includes a second one, and nobody seems to have noticed this,

and it's really important. The second tweet, foreign Influence, is me saying foreign influence operations are a joke and if you think they can swing an election, a presidential election, you need to take a deep breath. And it links to my story making that case. There is no private information in that tweet. That was articulating the point that

we've just been talking about this past few minutes. And it's very interesting that that was included in the band because there's no again, there's no private information to speak of.

It's just making the case that I that I said before, which I think is uncontroversial, but which there's currently I think a sort of moral panic around that the government is gonna there's some foreign government is going to redirect an election, and which social media companies are terrified of getting called in front of Congress and asked questions about and and you know, drilled about and are making every effort to look like they're complying with what the federal

government wants, which I think is problematic. And so I really want to know why they included that among it, because those are the only two emails listed. Again, that was just an analysis piece. I think I interviewed a

couple of people, but there were no documents. And so that makes the point that that I want to make with all this, which is that these companies are terrified of having the government say, hey, you didn't respond sufficiently to this threat after the election doesn't go one party's way or the other's way. And to the question, to the point about the addresses and the partial Social Security number,

all of that information is publicly available. It is not factually true to say that that you can say informally, you can say sort of like informally that's private information. But media companies buy it for research. I could go on my computer right now and in two minutes pull up an address, put and pull up any of this information that they're talking about. Journalists do it all the time.

Corporations are selling this stuff. The people running those people running for office preside over a legal system which does not regulate that kind of information. So it's out there in the open. You can literally google and find all of those addresses that were listed on there. The reason we did this, and it was an intentional was because the whole point of the story is that we are tired of adhering to these norms that exists to deprive

people of information. And it felt dishonest to decide, Oh, but we're going to do this for a public figure who's running for vice president, who the media has done segments of in front of his house early including last week, like including on the house, like the address label, like in front of the door. So I think that this entire thing is a tempest in the teapot, and to the extent that people are oh, I, you know, I sympathize with this kind of thing. He's not a private

individuals not at that house. That's not how this works. He's going around campaigning, And I guess more generally, I'm just frustrated by the there there's there's a mission creep that exists when the media is like, oh, we got to get you know, you can't do this, You can't do that. And then I was going through the document and thinking about this, and it occurred to me, there's all kinds of address stuff for businesses, does that count

of something you'd redact? And then for associates businesses, And it's kind of like this whole game that I just I have played it in the past. You know, I'll be candidate about that, but at a certain point, I'm just like, what is the point of any of this? Is this is a public figure that has a security detail and is facing less. You know. It's just so

it's kind of a philosophical point. And I understand that I probably in the minority there, but that is the philosophical position that we have on freedom of information.

But you know, as public figures, you and I being less of public figures than dat e vance, but still being public figures, you know it if it takes a few hoops for people to jump through to find my home address, I prefer it that way because you're just going to end up with a little bit less crazy at your doorstop and your mailbox, etc. If you make it widely available, you open up the funnel, so you're likely to get a little more weirdness at your doorstep.

That's that's one piece, And then, of course this is all in the context of his running mate having just you know, gone through two different assassination attempts.

we know about this. And I considered the you know, knock on effects, and I thought, you know, a home and then I mean, it's that you can't tell what the social security number is. I think half of it is redacted. That's why it's in the report. That's how they were able to get it. And that was ultimately my view. It just felt fake. It felt it felt phony to say, hey, media doesn't no best, then we know best.

pro Palestine speech. Like he's been fairly consistent. So he says, there's no question the Vance report that was published did contain information that should have been redacted prior to publication, including Vance's home address, but not only that. The solution is to take that down, repost a redactive version, and

reinstate Ken's account. What is your opposition to You know, you wouldn't even have to necessarily take this version down just posting a separate version that doesn't have those details and then linking to that on Twitter, and that way you're kind of calling Elon's bluff of like, all right, well, it's really about this quote unquote docxing. Here's a version that has all the details that you want stripped out, stripped down. Now, am I good to go? And you know,

if the answer is yes, okay, that's one thing. If the answer is still know, then the ideological motivation behind this action becomes even more clear.

that this this whole thing wasn't about that. It was about the it was about the hack of a political candidate whom he has given large sums of money and helps that will win. Yeah, so I guess, well, I guess we'll see what happens.

point of this this information. Anybody with an Nexus account can access literally in ten seconds. Corporations have it, the media has it, with the one audience that can't seem to have access to it as regular people, and that's frustrated to me. I understand that this is sort of a abstract point that I'm making, but I don't know. Just a lot of people disagree with me. A lot of my friends disagree with me, But I'm just trying to candidly articulate, like what my point of view on

it is. I mean, I don't want anybody to get hurt. I don't want anybody to get threatened, and when we publish it, my honest guess was that they wouldn't. And I'm frustrated that he says that, you know, this plays

into these streats. The threat matrix, as I've reported, as I've gone on the show to talk about, exists because of the breakdown of the national security state that is pushing this entire threat inflation ideology in the first place, that they the fact that a shooter can even get on a roof that is a profound failure on the

part of these agencies. It is not speech that's causing these things to happen, and the insinuation that that's kind of the catalyst for this is very dangerous and takes the onus off of these ridiculously incompetent agencies to do the most basic function of their job, which is protect current informer presidents. And so yeah, that really pissed me off.

that choice. I'm also not a journalist. But one of the things that I thought was important to note is, you know the right and Elon Musk specifically made a big deal of the fact that the information on that that was you know, taken from the Hunter Biden laptop, that that was blocked on Twitter, that you couldn't share it, You couldn't even DM it if you shared it. Even you accounts are getting banned just from sharing links to

this information. And you know that was described by the right as election interference, and you know, I was sympathetic to that. I don't think it you know, through the election for Joe Biden. But I don't think that it was the right choice that was made there in terms of, you know, in the interest of free speech and in the interest of you know, public having all of the information they possibly can to make an important decision about who they're going to vote for for president of the

United States. But Leifong, who you know, we both know, and who's a former colleague of yours, says the Hunter Biden laptop, which had news where the info that was fair game, also had personal docs info far more than this vance doc. The Biden laptop had bank and credit cards, personal addresses, nudity, etc. You can still link to those Biden docks on x, but the vance doc link is banned question mark. And I do think that sort of exposes the ideological motivation here, which again I mean I

shouldn't be surprised to anyone. Elon Musk is one of the largest contributors to Donald Trump's campaign. As far as we know, he appears to run x explicitly as a platform to try to favor Donald Trump. Whether that's working for him or not is another question. But the very different approach to those two stories, to me, kind of gives up the game of the ideological motivations behind this, behind this banning. And Lee has also noted, which I

think is important. Note as well, you also didn't publish those details on Twitter. You provided a link to your substack where those details were available, and that's also a different approach than has been taken in the past. In the past, the standard has been okay, if these public details of these private details are published on Twitter, that

could get you banned. But if you're linking to something that links to something that has those details, as far as I know, that has never passed muster in terms of causing an account suspension.

But I mean, honestly, credit to them for actually having some measure principle on some specific issue. Because they're on this issue, they're right and and and so I think that really speaks to it. And I don't know, well, I mean, what can you say? It's just so absurd, right, I mean, it's like a meme at this point, like oh yeah, quote unquote Elon Musk, free speech warrior. But it's like, I can't really think of a more kind of vivid rebuttal of that of his of his self sould,

what do you call himself? An absolute an absolutist on speech? Then then the thing that Republicans like him are most activated by than and doing the doing basically the exact same thing.

can go through my comments. I've never said, hey, this is like this person should be ejected from whatever the platform is, because I don't believe that that's true. I

don't like it. I think it's unpleasant, say it's rude even, but to say that's a threat, I mean, it's just so evocative of Again, this is a national security brain where you're looking at threat matrixes and who's going to come and attack us and all these kind of things, and I just I don't think that's a help the place for society and I think there's a creep where

people's concept of what constitutes a threat. Look at the word doxing, for example, that has come to encompass so many things beyond what it initially meant, which it had a specific meaning initially, and now you see people throw that word around to describe anything. That's what Elon is playing into when he says, oh, you're doxing my jet or whatever, and it's like, where is the limit? This is going to keep good? You know what I mean?

Public individuals are going to keep exploiting people's understandable empathy for these things, not realizing that they exist in a very different world than an ordinary private person does. I mean, they have private security, they don't live at the houses that they have listed or whatever. It's like completely different situation and I feel like they're exploiting it, and so

I needed to do a story on that. Really, it's like the kind of sprawling counter threat ideology and how it's encompassing more and more things and it results in less speech. And that's the thing I'm most concerned about. It's just this attitude and will shift on what is acceptable speech.