Journalist Banned From X After Publishing JD Vance Dossier

Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist, was banned from X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday after he published a dossier on Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) via his newsletter and promoted the link on the social media site owned by Elon Musk.

“Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number,” a post from X read.

The dossier is a 271-page research paper that the Donald Trump campaign had apparently compiled to properly vet Vance, now Trump’s running mate.

According to the Trump campaign, the Iranian government allegedly hacked the campaign. An anonymous sender emailed the dossier to several media outlets, but the outlets did not publish it.

In a follow-up post on his newsletter, Klippenstein argued that he never shared any private information on X; he just linked to it. He wrote, “The principle involved here is complex,” because Vance is an elected official and vice presidential candidate, but also because the private information is available for anyone to buy.

Klippenstein said it’s a “very funny end” to his time on the social media platform, but it’s also a “chilling effect on speech.”

“Not a single media organization was willing to publish a document that would have been a no-brainer during or prior to the heyday of Edward Snowden’s disclosures. That illustrates the dramatic shift in attitudes about what the news media thinks the public should know, and the role the mainstream plays in steadily ceding that territory to the national security threat machine. Media’s job, I believe, is to push back against these various forms of censorship.”

The dossier includes everything from Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities,” his past criticisms of Trump, and his criminal, police, voting and lobbying records.

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, told NBC News in August that Iran knows that Trump “will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House.”

“Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” Cheung said.

Musk, who called himself a “free speech absolutist,” bought Twitter and changed its name to X in 2022. Since then, he has temporarily suspended journalists who have negatively reported on him and his companies.