Today, X Corp. suspended journalist Ken Klippenstein’s account after he shared a document related to former President Donald Trump’s campaign, reportedly hacked by Iranian actors. This incident has sparked discussions across various media outlets questioning X’s claims of being a free speech platform.
The document in question is a 271-page opposition research file focused on Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance Dossier. Authorities, including the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued a joint statement earlier this week highlighting an increase in aggressive Iranian activities aimed at influencing the upcoming U.S. presidential election, including cyber operations against presidential campaigns.
While several media organizations received the document, they deemed its contents unworthy of publication. Klippenstein, however, took a different stance, posting the document on his Substack page and asserting that some information was “of keen public interest in an election season.” After sharing links to the document on his X account, he was suspended, and X subsequently blocked any links to the content.
This incident has drawn parallels to a previous controversy where X’s owner, Elon Musk, criticized the platform for blocking links to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which he argued was a violation of free speech. At that time, former intelligence officials had cautioned that the laptop could be linked to Russian intelligence, a claim that was later disproven.
Following Musk’s acquisition of X, the platform revised its policy regarding hacked materials, permitting links to news articles about such documents but prohibiting the sharing of the actual hacked content. This raises questions about potential hypocrisy in X’s decision to block links to the Vance document and suspend Klippenstein.
A spokesperson for X indicated that the suspension was due to the document’s inclusion of “unredacted private personal information,” which encompassed Vance’s phone number, home address, and email. X’s policy explicitly prohibits the publication of private information without consent, stating, “You may not threaten to expose, incentivize others to expose, or publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization.”
In a follow-up statement, Musk described the incident as one of the “most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen,” referring to assassination attempts on Trump. He highlighted that the doxxing included detailed information about the addresses of Trump’s children.