'This Is Political,' Journalist Who Published Vance Dossier Says of Permanent X Ban

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein said Friday that he was privately informed by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X that his account has been permanently banned, a decision that Klippenstein argued was "politically motivated."

X, formerly Twitter, suspended Klippenstein on Thursday after he posted to the platform a link to his Substack article containing a download link for a 271-page dossier that Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign prepared to vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who was ultimately chosen as the former president's running mate.

The dossier, Klippenstein noted, "reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign," and major news outlets such as Politicodeclined opportunities to publish it. The U.S. Justice Department on Friday charged three men with allegedly carrying out a hack against the Trump campaign.

In a statement issued late Thursday afternoon as it faced backlash, X said that "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."

On Friday, Klippenstein—who has previously worked for The Intercept and The Nation—shared a private message from X informing him that his account is "permanently in read-only mode, which means you can't post, Repost, or Like content" or "create new accounts."

"The two-step dance X is doing here—avoiding further backlash by pretending like my suspension is just a temporary thing, no big deal, while privately suspending me permanently—only makes sense when you consider the political dimensions," Klippenstein wrote on his Substack. "Elon Musk is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and JD Vance's political campaign. The Wall Street Journalreported that he promised $45 million a month for a pro-Trump Super PAC (Musk subsequently disputed this). So X clearly doesn't want to give the appearance that my ban was politically motivated. But a careful look at the pretext X cites for my suspension makes it obvious that this is political."

"The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over."

Observers have noted the obvious parallels between the social media platform's handling of the Vance dossier and a 2020 New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. At the time, Twitter—not yet under Musk's ownership—placed restrictions on sharing of the Post story, limits that were reversed months later.

Klippenstein noted Friday that Musk—a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist"—was "so incensed by Twitter's previous owners' decision to block the story on its platform that he took the extraordinary step of releasing Twitter's internal correspondence to independent journalist Matt Taibbi so he could report on how the decision came about. (I support his transparency, by the way.)"

"Now, anyone posting a link to my article finds their account locked, which is exactly how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post," Klippenstein wrote.

Journalist Lee Fang pointed out shortly after Klippenstein's ban that "the Hunter Biden laptop—which had newsworthy info that was fair game—also had personal dox info, far more than this Vance doc."

"The Biden laptop had bank/credit cards, personal addresses, nudity, etc," Fang added. "You can still link to those Biden docs on X, but Vance doc link banned?"

Klippenstein argued that "the biggest tell that this is political" is that X did not offer him a chance to restore his account by removing the post that resulted in his ban, as the platform typically does with users accused of violating its policies.

"As an experiment, last night my editor and I decided to redact all 'private' information from the Vance dossier in my story here at Substack," Klippenstein wrote Friday. "Despite filing an appeal in which I mention this, I remain banned. So it's not about a violation of X's policies. What else would you call this but politically motivated?"

"Boo hoo, poor me, I lost my account. That's not the point here," he continued. "If you were frustrated with the media's refusal to publish the Vance dossier, prepare for a future that's worse. The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over. Why take the risk when you can just blather on about the horse race? As always, it's the public that loses out the most."