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In the wake of Iran's alleged hack of Donald Trump's campaign servers, many media outlets vowed not to publish any of the information in the interest of combatting foreign electoral interference.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, however, has broken with the pack and chosen to publish in full the 271-page opposition research document on Trump's now-running mate JD Vance because, as he makes the case, it's in the public interest.
"As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable," Klippenstein wrote on his Substack, which features highlights from the lengthy dossier and the whole document as a download. "I’ll let it speak for itself."
Though the reporter's Substack post still stands, Klippenstein has been suspended from X-formerly-Twitter after posting a link to the dossier. We've reached out to Klippenstein for comment, but as others on the site note, it appears that X is claiming the document violates its rules against "sharing private information."
Despite the hubbub surrounding it, the file itself is pretty lackluster.
It doesn't contain, notably, the sort of salacious golden shower "fanfiction" of the infamous and discredited 2016 Steele Dossier about Trump.
It also likely won't have an impact anywhere near as outsize as the files Russia hacked from Hillary Clinton that year either, nor the nude images and drug content published after being found on Hunter Biden's laptop.
The saga of Biden's laptop is particularly interesting in light of the hacked Vance dossier.
Back when news of the laptop's contents were first published by the New York Post during the runup to the 2020 election, Twitter — not yet purchased by Elon Musk and rebranded as X — actively suppressed the story.
That move incensed Musk, who saw the move as inappropriate censorship — but now the shoe seems to be on the other foot, with Musk's social platform now using its power to quash a story that's embarrassing for Trump, of whom Musk has become an outspoken supporter.
"Elon doesn’t drop a grudge does he," Klippenstein posted on Substack after his suspension from Twitter today.
For the most part, the Vance research commissioned by the Trump campaign details areas where he differs from the former president's platform, or positions he has taken that could run counter to the candidate's own.
Fascinatingly, the dossier also contains several instances where Vance criticized Trump — some of which used some pretty harsh terms.
"What percentage of the American population has @realDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?" Trump's now-running mate posted in 2016 in a since-deleted post on Twitter, which CNN resurfaced in the wake of his surprise vice presidential nod this summer.
That same year, Vance also indicated that he believed at least one of the women who accused Trump of forcibly kissing and groping her in the 1970s.
"At a fundamental level, this is sort of a 'he said, she said,' right?" the Ohio senator said during an MSNBC segment about the allegations made by saleswoman Jessica Leeds. "And at the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth — just kidding — or do you believe that woman on that tape?"
Ultimately, the most damning aspect of this entire debacle seems far less about the document's contents and more about the strange way it's being treated — especially considering how rabid media was the last time a foreign actor hacked a presidential candidate's private documents.
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