Ken Klippenstein | |
---|---|
Born | Kenneth Jacob Klippenstein February 1, 1988 |
Education | Wheaton College (BA) |
Occupation | Journalist |
Years active | 2018–present |
Employers | |
Website | kenklippenstein |
Ken Klippenstein (born February 1, 1988) [1] [2] is an American journalist who worked at The Intercept . [3] [4] Prior to joining The Intercept, Klippenstein was the D.C. Correspondent at The Nation , [5] [6] [7] and previously was a senior investigative reporter for the online news program The Young Turks. [8] His work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Salon , and other publications. [9] His reporting has focused on U.S. federal and national security matters as well as corporate controversies. [10]
He is the son of Stephen J. Klippenstein, a theoretical chemist for the Department of Energy at the Argonne National Laboratory. [11] [12] [ better source needed ] Klippenstein's mother's family immigrated from El Salvador as undocumented migrants to the United States. [13] Klippenstein graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. [14] [15]
Klippenstein's early journalism career began in Madison, Wisconsin. [16] His work with The Young Turks started as early as 2018. [17] In 2020, Klippenstein joined The Nation as their D.C. correspondent. [7] On April 30, 2024, Klippenstein announced on his Substack newsletter that he was resigning from The Intercept and would primarily work on Substack. [4]
On September 26, 2024, Klippenstein shared a dossier on vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, reportedly hacked from the Trump campaign and subsequently leaked by Iran, on his Substack and linked to it from his Twitter account. [18] [19] Klippenstein's Twitter account was then blocked on the platform. [20]
On December 10, 2024, Klippenstein released on his Substack an alleged full text manifesto of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the the killing of Brian Thompson. [21]
Klippenstein is a self-described "FOIA nerd"; much of his journalism draws on information he has uncovered from records requested at state and national levels of the US government. [22] His articles also frequently include information from leaked documents. [23] He obtained leaked documents from the PR firm Qorvis, which implicated the company pitching the private company Caliburn on a propaganda video in order to improve the reputation of Caliburn's Homestead, a Florida shelter for "unaccompanied alien children". [24] [25] In an April 2020 article, Klippenstein reported on a leaked document showing that the Pentagon had warned the White House in 2017 about the risk of shortages and ill-preparation for a pandemic brought on by a novel coronavirus such as SARS-CoV-2. [26] [27] Klippenstein, along with Talia Lavin and Noelle Llamas, successfully sued the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [28] In December, 2020, he filed two new FOIA lawsuits: one against the U.S. Department of Justice, [29] and the other against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, U.S. Department of Energy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. [30]
During the George Floyd protests, Klippenstein's reporting uncovered documents regarding federal policing of the protests. Specifically, Klippenstein obtained an FBI document that stated the Washington Field Office "has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence" during DC-area protests in contradiction to Attorney General William Barr and other officials' assertions that Antifa were specifically responsible for instigating violence. [31] He also reported that contacts working at the Department of Homeland Security were disgruntled about orders to generate internal intelligence reports on journalists covering protests in Portland, Oregon as well as participating activists. [32] [33] Later, he co-authored with Lee Fang an article published by The Intercept in October 2022 regarding leaked documents exposing Department of Homeland Security's plans to secretly police disinformation online. [34] [35] In response, Klippenstein was interviewed on Useful Idiots , where he expressed concern about what he saw as a major media failure regarding intelligence information oversight in a situation with no one in control as things drift toward disaster. [36]
On August 9, 2023, Klippenstein authored an article published on The Intercept regarding information Klippenstein obtained via FOIA requests about "[t]he star witness of Congress’s UFO hearings, David Grusch", and Grusch's history relating to PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, and alcohol use. [37] On August 10, 2023, during an interview with Breaking Points , Klippenstein stated that he spoke with both "DoD people and intelligence people" while working on his article; Klippenstein described his sources as "mid-level people", who are "experienced, but didn't quite have the political chops generally to quite make it to the top." [38]
According to The Daily Beast , Klippenstein "has a history of pranking unknowing targets on Twitter". [39] Klippenstein has occasionally been the subject of reporting, as well, due to him pranking individuals from across the political spectrum. Following a Twitter flame war with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, he attracted Musk's attention by sharing a Vogue photograph from the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty showing Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell, a long-time associate of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had been convicted of sex trafficking. [40] Musk, who as of June 3, 2020, had 35.5 million Twitter followers, [41] publicly posted that Klippenstein was a "douche-about-town". [40] [42] On January 9, 2024, he and other journalists were abruptly banned from Twitter, which Musk owns. No explanation was given. [43] Klippenstein and the other journalists were later reinstated following media coverage of the incident. [44]
In July 2019, Klippenstein was covered in the media after a Twitter incident in which he was retweeted by Iowa Congressman Steve King just before changing his Twitter display name to "Steve King is a white supremacist". [45] [46] [47] In March 2021, Klippenstein pranked author Naomi Wolf by recommending she tweet an image of a fabricated anti-vaxxer quotation paired with a picture of American pornography actor Johnny Sins. [48]
On Memorial Day 2021, Klippenstein tricked political commentators Dinesh D'Souza and Matt Schlapp, as well as Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, into retweeting a photograph of John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, whom Klippenstein claimed was his veteran grandfather. [49] After being retweeted by Gaetz, Klippenstein changed his display name on Twitter to be "matt gaetz is a pedo". Gaetz later deleted his retweet. [50] [51]
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. His other involvements include ownership of X Corp., the company that operates the social media platform X, and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Musk is the wealthiest individual in the world; as of December 2024, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$439.4 billion.
Matthew Colin Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. A former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, he is the author of several books, former co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast, and publisher of the Racket News on Substack.
Gary S. Gensler is an American government official and former investment banker serving as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler previously worked for Goldman Sachs and has led the Biden–Harris transition's Federal Reserve, Banking, and Securities Regulators agency review team. Prior to his appointment, he was professor of Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
A media prank is a type of media event, perpetrated by staged speeches, activities, or press releases, designed to trick legitimate journalists into publishing erroneous or misleading articles. The term may also refer to such stories if planted by fake journalists, as well as the false story thereby published. A media prank is a form of culture jamming generally done as performance art or a practical joke for purposes of a humorous critique of mass media.
Censorship of Twitter refers to Internet censorship by governments that block access to Twitter. Twitter censorship also includes governmental notice and take down requests to Twitter, which it enforces in accordance with its Terms of Service when a government or authority submits a valid removal request to Twitter indicating that specific content published on the platform is illegal in their jurisdiction.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of Kabosu from the "doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community, reaching a peak market capitalization of over US$85 billion on May 5, 2021. As of 2021, it is the sleeve sponsor of Watford Football Club.
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by Starlink Services, LLC, an international telecommunications provider that is a wholly owned subsidiary of American aerospace company SpaceX, providing coverage to over 100 countries and territories. It also aims to provide global mobile broadband. Starlink has been instrumental to SpaceX's growth.
The Babylon Bee is a conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events, and public figures. It has been referred to as a Christian or conservative version of The Onion.
X, formerly Twitter, may suspend accounts, temporarily or permanently, from their social networking service. Suspensions of high-profile accounts often attract media attention, and X's use of suspensions has been controversial.
The Tesla Roadster is an upcoming battery electric four-seater sports car to be built by Tesla, Inc. The company said it will be capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, which would be quicker than any street legal production car to date at its announcement in November 2017. The Roadster is the successor to Tesla's first production car, the 2008 Roadster.
Elon Musk is the CEO or owner of multiple companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp, and has expressed many views on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from politics to science.
The business magnate Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of American social media company Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022. Musk had begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter invited Musk to join its board of directors, an offer he initially accepted before declining. On April 14, Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter's board responded with a "poison pill" strategy to resist a hostile takeover before unanimously accepting Musk's buyout offer of $44 billion on April 25. Musk stated that he planned to introduce new features to the platform, make its algorithms open-source, combat spambot accounts, and promote free speech, framing the acquisition as the cornerstone of X, an "everything app".
Rahul Ligma is a fictional fired Twitter employee, a character played by one of a pair of amateur improvisational actors that pranked multiple major media outlets on October 28, 2022. Ligma, the fictional character's surname, is a reference to the Ligma joke. The spontaneous and intentionally transparent hoax was revealed the same day, after the initial news coverage triggered debate among real Twitter employees about whether or not expected mass layoffs had already started. The Rahul Ligma character next appeared in early November as a recently unemployed FTX employee in the Bahamas. On November 15, Elon Musk, the incoming CEO of Twitter, facetiously offered Ligma and his compatriot their (fictional) old jobs back, and posted a photograph taken with them at Twitter headquarters. Although at least one journalist had publicly apologized for their failure to fact check before reporting the news, several notable media outlets were still oblivious to the running joke, and reported the duo's firing and rehiring as actual news. In social media, the follow-up stunt was widely criticized for lack of sensitivity to actual Twitter employees who had lost their jobs. On November 23, news reports surfaced once again, this time reporting that the actor playing Daniel Johnson had in fact been hired by Twitter for the first time.
The Twitter Files are a series of releases of select internal Twitter, Inc. documents published from December 2022 through March 2023 on Twitter. CEO Elon Musk gave the documents to journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and authors Michael Shellenberger, David Zweig and Alex Berenson shortly after he acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. Taibbi and Weiss coordinated the publication of the documents with Musk, releasing details of the files as a series of Twitter threads.
ElonJet is a service that uses social media accounts to track the real-time usage of Elon Musk's private airplane. The service, created and provided by Jack Sweeney using public data, has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Truth Social, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and formerly on Twitter, where the Twitter account once had about 530,000 followers, before being suspended. Several of the social media accounts use the handle @elonjet.
On December 15, 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of ten journalists who have covered the company and its owner, Elon Musk. They included reporters Keith Olbermann, Steven L. Herman, and Donie O'Sullivan, as well as journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept. Musk cited an incident between "a crazy stalker" and a car with his child as a justification for the suspensions. Posters on behalf of the owners of the accounts said that the suspensions were permanent. On December 16, 2022, Musk stated that account access would only be restricted for seven days and on December 17, 2022, some accounts were reportedly restored with Musk citing Twitter community polls as the reason for the reversal.
Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022; Musk acted as CEO of Twitter until June 2023 when he was succeeded by Linda Yaccarino. In a move that, despite Yaccarino's accession, was widely attributed to Musk, Twitter was rebranded to X on July 23, 2023, and its domain name changed from twitter.com to x.com on May 17, 2024.
Catturd is the online identity of right-wing American Twitter shitposter and Internet troll Phillip Buchanan. The account is known for its scatological humor, as well as spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation. Buchanan lives in Wewahitchka, Florida, on a "ranch in the middle of nowhere".