Ken Klippenstein

Why I published the J.D. Vance dossier


October 17, 2024
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Robby Soave is joined by Ken Klippenstein to discuss why the FBI believed he was the target of a foreign influence operation.


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Essais Online
Essais Online
23 days ago

Regarding the guest’s actions to re-broadcast documents of surrepticious origin, there are too many questions of the guest’s intent to discern whether his was a righteous act or a simple action deserving notoriety. I could not help asking whether the guest would consider re-published details or even common rumors of that insidious high school hernia as righteous free speech. No story here, except to again clarify the risks of libel versus slander. More interesting would have been an authorized article describing the research of a public person’s background and its evaluation by a political team in consideration of what may or may not be consequential for a VP candidate. A missed opportunity to explore public sensibilities and sensitivities!
Regarding the X response to his actions, it was encouraging that among doubtless millions of daily posts received, his re-publication was flagged for review at all — presuming that an algorithm caught the likely presence of personally identifiable information. And it was indeed impressive that among even a few thousand flagged daily posts, some human person actually spent time to review the contet of that particular post. I’d say that X’s free speech effort was praiseworthy.
Regarding any government’s response to apparent re-transmission of information from a potential adversarial foreign national, a face-to-face meeting between a sophomore agent and the subject seems minimally justified for investigation without escalation. The guest, though, made an effort to scandalize this as being excessive sensitivity. I disagree. They did not raid his home, nor even engage his employers or spouse. A formal letter would have been less productive, but more threatening by its physical display of the impersonal bureacracy in action. Have you ever received a review notice from the IRS? And please, see “Malinowski” for a clear example of a (superficially) hypersensitive and unjustified government encounter.
It was a relief to hear Mr. Soave state a competing perspective regarding the ethics of broadcasting personally identifiable information. To me, simply re-broadcasting surreptitious information ‘for others to decide’ is not journalism but instead a lazy plagiarism. If the information exposes plainly nefarious intent, then wrapping this into a carefully considered analysis may result in rebranding the act as ‘investigative journalism’ (e.g. the Watergate Scandal perspective). Anything less is simple scandal-mongering.