X blocks a journalist for publishing JD Vance's private information stolen by Iran

Social network X announced the temporary suspension of journalist Ken Klippenstein for having published the "private personal information" of JD Vance.

The document in question is a dossier that resulted from a Republican campaign investigation when the senator was being considered as a possible vice presidential candidate, a common practice in running mate selection processes.

That 271-page document would have been one of those stolen by Iran and then sent to media outlets as part of the Iranian efforts to influence the election. While several reporters refused, Klippenstein distributed the documents on Substack, a platform for publishing independent texts.

X stated that the data violating its policies constitutes "the majority" of the senator's details, including his Social Security number and physical addresses (although not specified, the document also contains his phone number, home address, and email address).

"I never published any private information on X"

Formerly in the ranks of The Intercept, Klippenstein now describes himself as a freelance journalist "covering national security and U.S. politics."

Publishing the dossier on Thursday, under the headline "Read the JD Vance Dossier," the journalist admits his decision was controversial, but defends that the information "it’s of keen public interest in an election season."

He also says that intelligence sources did not recognize that those pages were part of the material stolen by the Iranians, but defends its authenticity and specifies that it came to him in an e-mail sent by the same alias ("Robert") who sent those documents to various media. Asked for his motivation, Robert replied, Klippenstein says: "I just want to shine some light into the dark room."

After learning of X's ban, Klippenstein returned to Substack: "I never published any private information on X," he defended himself, claiming that he simply shared the link to his newsletter there. He also argued that JD Vance is an elected official, so the information would be in the public interest, and that all the data published was "readily available for anyone to buy."

He also accused Elon Musk's platform of censorship and reaffirmed his decision to publish the stolen information:

"Did I make a mistake in not redacting the “private” information on J.D. Vance? If I wanted a Twitter account, apparently so. But on principle? I stand by it absolutely."

Iran, with election in its sights

As recently as a week ago, the FBI confirmed that the Iranian regime had stolen Trump campaign material to send to the Democratic team and U.S. media. Spokespeople for Harris said they are unaware of the sending of material.

However, Iranian interference is not limited to hacks and disinformation: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence informed the Republican presidential campaign of Iranian threats "real and specific" to Trump's life.

After the warning became public, the former president pointed to the Biden-Harris administration at a rally:

"If I were president, and a former president and leading candidate to be the next president was under threat, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if they do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens."