Ken Klippenstein posts Iran's hacked Trump campaign document on Substack

An American journalist who runs an independent newsletter published a document on Thursday that appears to have been stolen from Donald Trump's presidential campaign – the first public release of a file believed to be part of a dossier that federal officials say is part of an Iranian initiative to manipulate the US election.

The PDF document is a 271-page opposition research file on former President Donald Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio.

For more than two months, hackers who the US says have ties to Iran have been trying to convince the American media to cover up the files they stole. No outlet took the bait.

But on Thursday, reporter Ken Klippenstein, who publishes on Substack after leaving The Intercept this year, published one of the files.

“If the document had been hacked by an 'anonymous' hacking group, the news media would be aware of it. I'm just not convinced that the news media is an arm of the government doing its job to combat foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper to what the public should know,” he wrote.

The release of the document reflects how a changing media ecosystem, with more and more high-profile independent journalists on platforms like Substack, may influence the ability of state-sponsored hackers to conduct election-influence operations.

In an interview, Klippenstein said: “It was a mood choice. They are so vague in their policies. There are so few details and something like this can give you a sense of what the campaign is thinking.”

At least three major news outlets and two independent journalists previously obtained a document described as the JD Vance dossier but did not publish it, citing a lack of newsworthy information in it.

The distribution of the Vance files appears to be a hack-and-leak operation, similar to how Russian intelligence leaked files from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016. These emails attracted a lot of media attention at the time, a decision that drew a lot of media criticism.

Politico, which said it received unpublished Trump documents since July 22, was the first news outlet to report receiving the documents. The Trump campaign admitted last month to being hacked and blamed Iran, but did not provide details or immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Research published by Google and Microsoft suggests the hack took place in June.

Three US agencies have publicly attributed the hacking and subsequent distribution of the files to Iran.

Iranian officials have denied involvement in the hack. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's vice president for strategic affairs, told NBC News on Tuesday that the country “has no interest in changing or influencing the results of this election” and that “Iran's government and officials have not hacked anyone.” “. The people who work for us didn’t either.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has repeatedly said since July that Iran is trying to harm Trump's candidacy. As president, Trump authorized the assassination of military leader Qassem Soleimani. Intelligence officials have also briefed Trump on alleged ongoing Iranian assassination attempts against him. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Reporters who obtained the documents describe the same pattern: An AOL account emails them files signed by a person named “Robert” who declines to reveal their identity or reasons for reporting to reveal the documents.

NBC News was not part of the Robert personality's direct public relations efforts, but has seen correspondence with a reporter at another publication.

One of the Robert personality's emails previously viewed by NBC News contained three large PDF files, each corresponding to Trump's three reported finalists for vice president. The Vance file appears to be the one that Klippenstein hosts on his website.

X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to have initially taken the strongest stance against Klippenstein following his Substack post, suspending accounts that shared links to his post and suspending his account. Elon Musk, who owns the site, has been a vocal critic of the way Twitter's former leadership restricted access to an “October Surprise” story in the New York Post about scandalous material found on a laptop belonging to the president Joe Biden's son Hunter was found.

Former intelligence officials warned at the time that the laptop was consistent with Russian intelligence work, although no direct connection has been publicly proven.

A spokesman for

Klippenstein wrote an additional post on Substack on Thursday defending his decision to publish the file while acknowledging that it appeared to violate X's rules.

“Did I make a mistake by not redacting the 'private' information about JD Vance? If I wanted a Twitter account, obviously. But on principle? I absolutely stand by it,” he said.

Representatives for Substack did not immediately respond to a request for comment.