Today’s show is a piñata, and each time a blindfolded Travis takes a swing at it, a new and weirder piece of candy falls to the ground for Jake and Liv to nibble on. First, we’ll be talking about how even conspiracy theorists had to push back against a terribly lazy hoax about VP candidate Tim Walz. Then we’ll be talking to reporter Robyn Pennacchia about her deep dive into a majorly pilled telegram community whose leader disperses intel drops she claims come from both the military and celestial angels. And as a special desert, we’re sitting down with reporter Ken Klippenstein to discuss his recent defeat & subsequent victory against Elon, after Ken linked to his reporting about the JD Vance dossier.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes:
www.patreon.com/QAA
Robyn Pennacchia:
https://x.com/RobynElyse // https://substack.com/@robynelyse
Ken Klippenstein:
https://x.com/kenklippenstein // https://www.kenklippenstein.com
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
It unfortunately happens on X. As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokotansky, Liv Ecker, and Travis View.
Just last month, the Pew Research Center released a poll which revealed that 54% of U.S. adults, a little bit more than half, at least sometimes consume news on social media.
That includes 25% of U.S. adults who say that they often get their news from social media, which is the highest number that they have documented since they started polling this question.
It's honestly, I feel like that's surprisingly low, given how important online is to, like, a lot of the election cycle.
I guess, like, the people who are online are just, like, everyone who's running the country has a Twitter account.
Yeah, it seems, it seems...
I mean, I think for myself, who's perhaps steeped in this stuff, it seems like everybody with any degree of influence or power has an account and wants to promote their views on social media.
It seems like it would be more, but I still think that the fact that a quarter of U.S. adults do it often, considering this includes older Americans, the total population, I think it's a lot.
Yeah, it's enough of the population to produce the terrifying results in politics that we see.
Yeah.
But as the number of people who rely on social media for news increases, it seems like the problems associated with doing so get worse, especially on The platform formerly known as Twitter, where accounts with blue checkmarks go viral by fabricating evidence of serious crimes.
Its AI program, Grok, treats clearly made-up claims as if they were real, and its owner, Elon Musk, moderates the platform in a manner that is totally arbitrary, according to his passing whims.
So for today's episode, we're going to be talking about an account that makes viral claims so outrageous that even some QAnon accounts are pushing back against it.
Then we'll be talking to Robin Panacchia from Wonkette about how these batshit claims from a strange Telegram channel have made their way to mainstream social media platforms.
And finally, we'll be speaking to Ken Klippenstein about his decision to publish the J.D. Vance dossier and how this led to his suspension on X. And also how he got his account restored, thanks in part to the intervention of one of the Krasenstein brothers.
Amazing.
That sounds like a joke, but that's actually what happened.
This honestly sounds like a banger of an ep.
This feels like classic, classic 2022 era QAA. It's really thanks to Elon Musk for giving us all this material.
Business is booming.
Nothing bad.
Elon Musk, he went down into the basement of the firehouse.
He shut off the power grid.
All of the ghouls and goblins.
They escape through the top of the firehouse, polluting the world, and they're all coming together to form a giant marshmallow man that will cover us in white goo by the time November 4th rolls around.
So, great.
Good stuff.
Got in a Ghostbusters reference right off the bat.
Awesome.
I think we're up to a good start.
Travis, take us away.
So, yeah, let's get started, because this is interesting, because I sometimes wonder, like, what's the limit for right-wing conspiracists in terms of, like, what they're willing to believe or who they're willing to trust?
Because, you know, it's obviously very easy to believe that your political enemies are evil with no real substantial evidence, but surely sometimes they get sick of being jerked around.
And there was a recent incident with a notorious spreader of fake news that gave me an idea of, like, what that limit is for some conspiracy theorists.
So, there's an account on Twitter, X, called Black Insurrectionist I Follow Back True Patriots.
Hashtag no patriots under 300 followers.
Well, yeah, this strategy seems to be working for them because they have over 350,000 followers.
That is three times our main pod account.
Yeah.
My goodness.
That's 100,000 more than Liv.
Yeah, it's only a bit less than double mine.
And her content's great.
And here's this guy, Insurrectionist, I Follow Back True Patriots, is his name, by the way.
He legally changed his name.
To iFollowBackTruePatriots.
It was a tough time in the courts, but they got it pushed through, and he has trouble filling out information fields online, but other than that, he's living his best life.
I need to start spreading more misinformation.
You need to add a sentence.
It needs to be live, Agar, and then some kind of statement.
So, this account recently promoted baseless allegations that Harris campaign running mate Tim Waltz had an inappropriate relationship with a minor, but this claim quickly fell apart after even right-wing accounts noticed signs that the supposed evidence was fabricated.
Now, this account had previously been successful in promoting false claims in the right-wing ecosystem.
Just last month, it promoted the claim that the ABC News debate between Harris and Trump was rigged in Harris' favor, saying this.
I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate.
I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower.
The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample questions, which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate, and separate assurances of fact-checking Donald Trump and that she would not be fact-checked.
It's so interesting.
Like, this is how you know your candidate won a debate, when you're like, actually, the other side cheated.
They're like, we won the debate, we won it, but it's very obvious that they cheated.
When this claim was repeated by an account called Leading Reports, it was amplified by platform owner Elon Musk and several other right-wing influencers.
Billionaire Bill Ackman also took the claim as true and decried the, quote, Donald Trump himself ran with it on Truth Social, posting this, People are saying that Gamrat Gamala Harris had the questions from Fake News ABC. I would say it is very likely the two so-called anchors were a disgrace to modern day journalism.
That's kind of a boring truth.
Truth tweet.
Pretty standard stuff.
I don't feel like he authored this one himself.
It doesn't quite have the same juice as his authentic posts.
Be like, Jelly Bean Jake Tapper.
Doesn't know when to stop.
Like, yeah, it would be a little bit more, it would have a little bit more panache, but maybe he just doesn't have it in him anymore.
Maybe he's just...
Yeah, he could just be tired.
Yeah.
Sleepy guy.
So, this tale took an additional turn when an anonymous WordPress blog reported the claim that this ABC whistleblower died in a car crash.
Like, it's like, obviously, who could possibly believe this nonsense?
Well, how about the congresswoman from Georgia's 14th District, Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Of course.
Of course.
She bought it on September 15th.
She tweeted this.
The ABC whistleblower who claimed Kamala Harris was given debate questions ahead of the debate has died in a car crash, according to news reports.
According to news reports...
Yeah, according to, yeah, yeah.
Anonymous newsletter.
Cue into the storm newsletter that I read quite frequently.
We are approaching peak chief of police where all information is essentially just this, like their car was blown up, whistleblower killed, affidavit, NDA. It's just like throwing around words that sound like they're kind of cryptic and official, but none of it, none of it is real.
And it's all the discourse, like, traps in 2016.
Like, the idea of one of the debate candidates getting the questions beforehand is what happened with, like, Hillary and Bernie.
Right.
They're just, they've lost the juice.
They've lost, like, the juice.
It's just everything again and again.
2016 eternal recurrence.
Yeah, it's almost like they got what they wanted by having the right sort of party and its base become so extreme that now they don't know what to do.
It's like a dog who's caught the back of the mailman's truck.
So, just to give her the smallest amount of credit, after Marjorie Taylor Greene posted this nonsense, four hours later, she followed up with this.
This story appears to be false, and I'm glad to hear it.
It's so funny.
It's like, you're not glad to hear it.
You were so sad when you heard that wasn't true.
You wanted it to be true so badly.
Yeah, and then also, she didn't delete the original tweet, so it's still up.
Best of both worlds.
Yeah, right?
But good for her.
Good for her.
We like Marjorie again, actually.
No, we don't.
We actually think she's actually...
I think she's a change.
She's a changing.
She's a changed person.
We can count on her for information now.
And I think she should probably run for president next time around.
Thank you.
Despite how far it spread, obviously nothing substantive to this.
Not true.
In fact, on the day we're recording this, Bill Ackman, billionaire investor, posted a link debunking it saying this.
It seems pretty clear that the alleged ABC whistleblower debate story claiming that Kamala Harris was given questions in advance and other advantages was a fake.
Yeah, obviously.
Obviously.
You know, see, here's the funny thing.
And sort of talking about, I listed like three billionaires and, you know, and a member of Congress who fell for this.
You know, sometimes we talk about like the problem of like, you know, fake news and like, you know, it's not like gullible rubes necessarily who fall for this nonsense.
Sometimes it's the people at the top of society who are absolutely taken in by the most worthless dogshit claims that you can find on the Internet.
Also, who fucking cares?
Like, this isn't some major scandal like, oh, they got the questions, but as if they don't have like an entire team devoted to watching past debates and looking at the political climate and being able to pretty much guess what they're going to ask about and train them.
If it was like...
I don't know.
Like, they go through all of these training processes of like, okay, if they ask this, how would you answer?
If they ask this, how would you answer?
I would imagine that it's very, very rare that a question comes out of the mouths of one of these anchors or debate moderators that like a candidate is like, holy fucking shit.
It's not like in a spelling bee where they're like, spell thorough.
You know what I mean?
Like, there's no tricks and traps here.
With the way Kamala's been answering some questions, I feel like I disagree with that.
Like, Like, during the recent town hall, when someone was like, my mom died because she didn't have access to healthcare, because she, like, wasn't on board as a citizen, like, her response was bragging about trying to pass the bipartisan border bill in 2022.
What?
Like, that was her response, was like, yeah, it was better than it happened, you know, I tried to fix the border.
So I don't know, I don't know, I don't think they're, I don't think that they're- If she had fixed the border, then the mom, like, never would have come over and wouldn't have died here?
Yeah, she definitely would not have been a fucking citizen.
Well, Kamala, I can't help you then.
And little Jake Depper can help you either then.
Just last week, this black insurrectionist account tried to make another attempt at going viral with another outrageous claim.
On October 13th, he posted what he alleged were screenshots of supposed email communications with the accuser of Tim Waltz.
In an email dated August 8th, 2024, the supposed accuser, who claims to be an adult male, alleges to have known Waltz and his wife Gwen back when he was a child, saying this...
He manipulated me.
He did unspeakable things with me.
I can give you details that nobody else can.
Boy, quite serious allegations.
It would certainly be psychotic if the person who typed this out was the person who ran the account himself.
That's fascinating.
I have an anonymous source.
But as Black Insurrectionists posted more screenshots of his correspondence with this supposed victim, people started noticing problems.
For example, some emails had a comma placed after the day of the week, while others didn't.
One email listed the date sent as like Friday, August 9, while another had it formatted as Thursday, no comma, August 8.
If you're using the same email program, it has the same formatting, so there's clearly a problem there.
He's like doing it like a text editing software or something.
Like he's not even just get two email accounts.
He could send himself an email.
Yeah, which would make it more authentic.
But he's just typing this up in like some sort of word processor.
But perhaps like most damning, one email screenshot included a cursor at the end of the email indicating that the person who took the screenshot had just written this supposed email.
That's awesome.
Like, it's tight.
Like, he's in the middle of typing it.
Like, that line.
That's incredible.
I know.
It's funny, because it's just like, just wait, like, in between when you can't see the cursor, because it blinks.
I know.
There's the other thing.
There was a 50-50 chance of this not appearing in the screenshot.
He's just so lazy.
He just included it anyway in the post.
He's like me.
He was like me on Halloween night coming home from trick-or-treating.
Just can't get the candy unwrapped fast enough.
He can't get it in his mouth fast enough.
He can't post these fake emails quick enough.
He's so excited about this hoax.
I love it.
So, obviously, you know, some people were trying, you know, eager to eat up the claim that, like, you know, Tim Waltz had done something horrible, but a lot of other, like, right-wing influencers actually really pushed back pretty hard.
One of the people who pushed back on these claims was War Clandestine, who was just an out-and-out QAnon promoter.
So, they said this regarding a screenshot of a victim statement.
This could have been typed up by anyone.
Which is a good summary of QAnon.
Yeah, I know, right?
Yes, yes.
And why would a Tim Walz accuser go running to some random on Twitter with these allegations?
This reeks of bullshit.
Anyone believing this black insurrectionist account is gullible.
So everyone's turned into Jordan Sather now.
More clandestine!
I know.
I'm so fascinated by the way that, like, some conspiracists police the boundaries of acceptable claims that go viral.
Like, why are you again?
Why are you able to apply this kind of skepticism and scrutiny when it comes to black insurrectionists, but not Q?
What exactly is the distinction that sort of like makes, you know, someone more sort of amendable to accepting claims from one entity and but not another?
It's sort of like how with Trump, like, people have tried to copy his just, like, not apologizing after saying awful things, but they're unable to do it.
Like, there's something about him specifically that allows him to get away with that shit.
Like, maybe it's the same with Q, where it's like, there was just a cultural moment where all these guys were like, yeah, I guess Hillary Clinton is eating babies or whatever.
It's like, I guess, you know, Black insurrectionists just doesn't have the swag to repeat it.
There's a certain cultural energy you need.
Yeah, maybe they were there before Trump.
Maybe they were there before black insurrectionists, and so they were kind of like, hey man, we're kind of doing the lore.
We don't like your lore.
Yeah, that's true.
So War Clandestine followed up with this satirical tweet.
It's a chat GPT image of Trump and I guess Santa Claus with like M4s or M16s.
And then breaking news!
Exclamation point.
So he got his ass.
Yeah, God is having a good time.
But he still had to hide replies, as I can see from this one.
Even when he's making fun of somebody who's a worse conspiracy theory than him, he's still got to hide the replies.
Now, it got so bad that some conspiracists started making conspiracy theories about why black insurrectionists was spreading such poorly substantiated conspiracy theories.
So, Jack Posobiec said this.
That Tim Walz story, feeling like planted disinfo op.
There we go.
So, a conspiracy within the conspiracy, like, it's like, it's not just that this guy sucks at posting conspiracy theories.
This feels like somebody from the deep state wanted one of us to post a shitty conspiracy to do something.
It's so funny to do this when you thought...
When you were like, oh, is pizza gay real?
I don't know.
It's kind of like...
Like, how is pizza...
Like, walnut sauce is more than this?
I don't believe that.
Yeah, the Jack Posobiec of 2024 would think that the Jack Posobiec of 2019 was doing a planted disinfo drop.
I feel like a part of this is really like, like with everything, you gotta be in on it early.
And all these fucking upstarts.
They're fucking up our grift by trying to reinvent the wheel here.
It's 2016 forever, continually.
You have to run with these ones.
You know what?
This also kind of made me realize why the whole do-your-own-research sort of method of spreading conspiracy theories is so much more effective than, like, just making up fabricating evidence.
Because when you say, like, oh, there's evidence of, like, a child trafficking ring in the leaked DNC emails, and go, like, where?
It's like, go out.
Go find for yourself.
Look through their authentic emails.
So look through them yourself and you will find them.
And then, you know, the individual can then sort of assure that there's something to be found there, can convince themselves that they found something substantial.
But when you just like make up like fake emails or fake victim statements, fake affidavits, then it's so much easier to debunk.
It's like, well, you're saying this is real and you're saying that this particular claim is substantial by getting able to find like all of these flaws.
Yeah, it's interesting, like.
Like, Elon buying Twitter's, like, ruined made Culture Online so much worse.
But also for the conspiracy theorists.
Like, the selection mechanisms they have for, like, what conspiracy theorist gets the most likes is also way worse.
It's very interesting.
Because it's the blue check.
It really is.
Like, the fact that you can pay to have your replies, like, and tweets boosted.
It's, like, just the worst posters.
Regardless of your political ideology, the worst posters are going to be the ones who do that.
It's poison.
They've won and they're miserable because of it.
I feel like that's a part of it too, is like the feeling of winning, if you're this insane person, is like nice, but like, it's already happened now.
It's like in Dune when, you know, Polatridis Empire, they all conquer the universe, but they get bored afterwards.
It's like, fuck, we have this empire to administer.
This sucks.
Well, yo, I mean, like, I felt like that after Joe Biden won, honestly, where I was like, for two weeks, none of the news and nobody was talking about Trump and they were doing this thing.
They were like, we never have to talk about him again.
Like, good riddance and kind of wiping their hands.
And then for the next, like, 340 days, they were like, democracy is teetering on the edge.
Like, it was as if he was still president.
And it's like they won and it wasn't good enough.
And like, it didn't feel good to do MAGA back to the people who like did MAGA to you first.
And so I don't know.
Like they kept coming up with new ways to try to feel awesome.
Like whether it was like Dark Brandon or, you know, all of this shit.
And I think there is something to be said.
And this has definitely come up before on this show in particular that you can win.
And because society is so cooked and things just kind of generally feel so bad, like it's not good enough.
It still sucks.
You're bored.
The only gratification you get is that the other side is pissed off.
Yes.
That's not actually all that fun.
That's not nice.
No, it's not chill.
It's not very chill or cool.
It's just sadistic.
It's like, oh, it's fun that they're owned.
What do we do now?
Everything still sucks.
All the things that make you sad are still there, really.
Yeah.
On October 9th, the fake news website Before It's News published a dramatic story about a supposed human trafficker who was arrested in the wake of the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene.
In Candler, North Carolina, near Asheville, the White Hats arrested the kingpin of all-time human traffickers, High Horseman, along with 41 of his men.
This sounds like a Humpty Dits like all the King's men couldn't put him back together again.
One of the most traffickers of all time.
The most traffickers of all time.
The Coalition had fought off and killed FEMA agents in order to get to the satanic coven of high horsemen, whom they had tried to catch for over 30 years.
Candler, North Carolina was considered a hotbed Wiccan community, which was composed of witches, witchcraft, and the occult.
After Hurricane Helene, numerous babies' bodies had been seen floating in a river running by Candler.
The babies weren't from local families, but from a dumb underground tunnel.
A little bit redundant there.
But from a dumb underground tunnel beneath Candler, now flooded, where human trafficking has taken place.
Well, I will say, yeah, this is one of the, a little bit more first drafty of the, you know, of the style of conspiracy theories.
Maybe run it through Grammarly next time, guys.
Yeah.
Before you release it.
Yeah, a little clunky, but, you know, it hits upon common themes in, like, the most deranged kind of online conspiracy theories.
Secret white hats doing operations, human trafficking, you know, Satanism.
So, obvious nonsense, but it was repeated by several accounts on Twitter that had paid for a blue checkmark, some of which received hundreds of retweets and tens of thousands of views.
And in the style of QAnon, anonymous social media users have even added to the story.
And as I'll talk about soon, it was even accepted as real by artificial intelligence programs like Grok and ChatGPT.
Grok, I expect.
Like, anything built by Elon, fair enough.
But Chachibuti is a step above that in shock.
That's disappointing.
So, where did the story come from?
So, that was discovered by our guest today, Robin Panacchia, who wrote about what she found for Wonkhet.
So, Robin, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, this was a really fascinating find.
Both the spread of the story and its source, which is a real rabbit hole in itself.
Now, I mean, sometimes these stories, they're crowdsourced, or sometimes they come from one individual random Twitter user or something.
But you traced it to a telegram group called Ginger's Liberty Lounge.
So what did you discover there?
Well, so first of all, weirdly, I traced it from the Great Awakening message board to there, and that is how I came upon Ginger, who apparently has connects with a group called the Military Alliance, another group called the Celestial Alliance.
And the Celestial Alliance are angels who tell her what's happening.
And so some of the people that told her what's happening are half from the military, these insider people, and the other half were angels, including St.
Michael the Archangel, because they love St.
Michael.
And it's a very, very odd...
It's a smaller group.
It's only about, like, 10,000 people.
But, you know, it's run by this lady, Ginger, who loves to talk about how very, very, you know, committed she is to never spreading fake news, to only saying the absolute truth.
And, you know, again, also talks to angels, as one does.
It's also weirdly an Asara-Gasara group.
I think that's how it's pronounced.
It is...
Definitely very, very interesting.
And she actually expounded more on it being part of a satanic coven.
The High Horseman was not just a child trafficker.
He was also the head, you know, part of this, you know, evil satanic coven.
And they were doing satanic ritual abuse on the children as they do.
Yeah, this gets into the weirder side of, you know, your QAnon-flavored conspiracy theories, where you have a military aspect, but then you also have an extremely religious aspect.
And the addition of witches!
I mean, you don't hear too much about covens in QAnon or conspiracy theory lore, so that's adding a little bit of flavor, I feel like, to this one.
Yeah, I like the, I know there's been like, maybe there's been an uptick of that recently because of like witch talk stuff.
There's been more like witch content of people being like, I am actually a witch.
I am like, you know, we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn sort of stuff.
So it's interesting to see like the negative reaction because that it makes sense if you're like an insane Christian person that you would not want witches to be the like, that would be like a major motivation.
When of course in reality it's like, you know, just like quirky bisexual women who like to collect rocks.
I have seen a lot of it lately.
Recently I did another thing on this lady who, you know, was very upset about all the occult things in Five Below and was very worried that, you know, the witches had infiltrated Five Below, the discount store.
They're coming for all of our favorite things.
All of our favorite spices they're using in their evil spells.
No, I've personally seen a lot of it lately, although I spend a lot of time with the satanic ritual abuse people.
Not personally, but following them because I have an exciting life.
You know who hasn't been taken over by a coven is Hobby Lobby.
If you go into Hobby Lobby, even around Halloween, I didn't know this, my wife pointed it out to me, apparently they're very, very religious, and if you go in on Halloween, they'll have a fall-themed section, and it's like pumpkins, and I don't even know if they've got scarecrows, but it's like Pumpkins and leaves and wreaths, but there's no ghosts, there's no goblins, there's no witches, there's none of that.
So the coven, five below, compromised.
But Hobby Lobby, still pure.
I'm excited for the Halloween posting for Pilled People, because some Christians do get really scared about Halloween.
It's like they're the bad spirits, you know?
They're ghosts.
And ghouls.
Those are not good things.
Honestly, it's one of my favorite times of the year, just for that reason.
All the ex-Satanists come out of the closet and they are the best.
Oh yes, like the thousands of people, tens of thousands of people that have supposedly been in evil Satanist cults.
So many of them.
So many of them.
What Mike Warnke has wrought upon the world is that.
So one of the, I think one of the most interesting quirks about this particular group is that she calls the sort of the intelligence drops gintel.
That's good.
I like that.
Yeah, it's good.
It's good branding.
Get it?
Because ginger?
Yeah.
I thought, to me, it sounds more like stuff you come up with when you're drinking gin.
You know, I get a lot of that.
Yeah.
So, I mean, here's an example of how the page, like, promotes its gintel.
Gintel incoming.
And it's hot.
Please stand by.
I like her.
This is, like, sassy.
Organizing and typing my intel to streamline because it's multivetted.
Probably one of the best things I've ever shared because it's going to include the big picture background with precise update for today's current news.
Maneuver's happening today.
Right now.
I mean, this function's basically just a lot like QAnon or other kind of people who claim to have secret intel, that they hype up these claims and that they have secret sources.
But in this particular instance, usually the Jintel is delivered via these sort of like low quality audio recordings of Ginger speaking.
Nice.
Kind of like a found footage move, like an early 90s, like Blair Witch Project.
We should be incorporating this into audio in some way.
She's doing like QAnon voice note things.
Like sometimes instead of texting, someone will send you a voice note.
She's like, I'm too lazy.
We've all got one friend who likes to send in voice notes.
And I guess it makes perfect sense that we've all got one poster who likes to post drops in voice memos.
So here's how Ginger explained the arrest of this figure called the High Horseman.
The fella that they got, he was the kingpin of them all.
Like the big chief daddy.
The biggest of all time.
They got 41 of his top guys as well.
Today, on October 8th, 2024, it would have happened around 6 to 7 this evening.
This is huge.
They said that the White Hats have been looking for this cat for 30 years.
And that he has had 18 facial surgeries to try to conceal his identity all this time.
This is like a 15 year old trying to tell a scary story by the campfire.
I do appreciate that she uses, like, old-timey slang, which I also do, and now I'm questioning it.
Like, she's, like, calling, like, oh, this fella, this cat.
I don't say cat, that's awful, but, like...
This is, this is, like, chief of police shit.
This is QAnon at its best, where somebody has just decided that they're like, I'm just going to make up this really fun story and kind of think up details as I go along.
I mean, you could practically hear the angels whispering into her ears in the background there.
I mean, maybe it's the audio quality, but I'm pretty sure I heard a couple extra voices.
I'll bet if you slowed it down and played out the frequencies, got some EVPs going in there, you could hear them whispering.
Be like, 41 reconstruction surgeries.
Yeah, I love the specific numbers she offers.
It's like, how many of the High Horseman's henchmen were arrested?
40.
Like, how many surgeries did he get?
18.
You know, the specificity really lends a lot of credibility to this intel she's getting from the Angels.
You know, this is the thing.
You actually cannot do 18 facial reconstructive surgeries without turning into that cat lady.
What's her face?
You know, the lady who looks like a cat, Jocelyn Wildenstein.
Like, that's what you look like after 15 facial reconstruction surgeries.
Legally.
There's no way.
I love that this lore has a proper villain too, although it's kind of like a Scooby-Doo villain, like, oh, the High Horseman.
But I love that.
I love that he's got kind of like a criminal name.
I mean, this is some Carmen Sandiego style shit.
And it's so, actually, I'm sure it turns awful.
I know it's going to turn awful and bad and sad at some point, but it's so nice to get back into these style of conspiracies instead of stuff that's like, Essentially telling people not to evacuate a hurricane evacuation zone.
This feels harmless right now.
I know I'm going to eat my words later, but it's nice.
I'm having fun right now.
It feels like a Charlie Brown Halloween special.
Yeah, totally.
We're just a little bit pilled.
But I know that Travis and Robin are going to pull the football out from under my leg and tell me how lives have been ruined by this person.
So let's get on with it.
There's another clip I want to play.
So here is Ginger explaining why the arrest location of Asheville is supposedly relevant.
I was also advised from the Celestial Alliance to remind everyone, in case you did not know, that Asheville, North Carolina, is the number one largest Wiccan community in the United States, if not the world.
And by Wiccan, I'm meaning W-I-C-C-A-N, Witches and Witchcraft and the Occult.
So you know that there's a lot of satanic ritual abuse That would go on there.
Yeah, spooky stuff.
I didn't know that, that Asheville was the Wiccan capital of the world.
Do we know if that's true or not?
You know, I tried to look it up, but there is not actually any data on that.
Yeah, there's not a lot of polling amongst the Wiccan community.
That makes sense.
You need to just look on, like, the field dating app and see how many people.
If it's a hotspot, maybe.
Maybe she's got a point.
I was thinking that she sounds really familiar, and I was like, where have I heard it?
I was like, have I come across her Post or something.
And then I realized during that recording that who I was thinking of is Zelda Rubenstein's character from Poltergeist who's like, Carol Ann, like if you listen to her voice, it sounds almost identical, like very similar rhythm.
Yeah, I mean, like we were talking about online, a lot of the stuff, I mean, it's obviously a lot of it is a copy-paste of I Am activity and kind of like Western occultism, you know, but it's just, again, re-re-repackaged for the 21st century.
And, I mean, it's spooky because it's very effective at drawing people in.
uh especially people who are kind of gullible and getting them to believe a lot of nonsense and then treating this ginger character as if she has some sort of actual special connection to you know her version of the ascended masters which is the celestial alliance and she does sometimes refer to herself as having ascended and some other people in her like circle as having ascended um But, you know, no references to St.
Germain or anything like that, sadly.
But St.
Michael, you know, that's a little kind of adjacent.
We don't talk about every single nonsense claim that's spread in social media or every single weird telegram group.
But we want to talk about this one because of how strangely far this one spread.
Like we talked about, it spread on Twitter.
I also found a few people on Facebook who were talking about it and treating it as if it was real.
And then what also kind of concerned me was that the messages of the people who follow this Ginger person and really seem to have a very strong affinity for her.
So this is one of the messages that was posted by a follower of Ginger.
I've been in and out of Jinjin groups for years.
She's good people.
She's not one to tell lies.
No one has time for lies.
The longer you're, spelled U-R, in year, the more time you, spelled U, spend here you will see.
Don't take my word for it.
I found my home in GLL after five years of bouncing around.
Let me add, ellipses, if Ginger doesn't know the answer to a question, she will tell you.
She's not one who will spread misinformation.
You can take that to the bank.
Which is, there's a couple things about that that feel ominous or grim, of just, like, treating it like it's a home.
Like, I've been bouncing around, I didn't feel like I was, like, I belonged to anyone.
And then I found her group, and now I feel like I'm, you know, it's good, they're good people, it's good to spend time there.
And also, like, the faith that they have in her.
Like, you can take that to the bank, feels like.
Maybe this has already happened, I don't know, but that feels like there's, like, an economic scam coming.
Maybe it hasn't happened yet, maybe it has, we'll see.
There is a special ginger group, and I haven't totally, I'm very bad at financial things or understanding them, that's not really like where my brain is at, called GLL Trusts and LLCs, and they're showing people how to set up trusts and LLCs and employment ID numbers.
Hmm.
That seems problematic.
Yes.
I'm like, something is wrong here.
I don't understand it, but it does not seem like a very good idea.
It seems like people are probably going to end up getting scammed pretty badly because they're setting up all kinds of financial things in anticipation of the revaluation.
Or she actually calls it the camper event.
Oh, she calls her people campers.
I did see that they set up a GiveSendGo page.
This is basically like the Christian right-wing version of crowdfunding.
And they had raised over $18,000 for something called the Ginger's Liberty Lounge Benevolent Fund.
And here's how that fund is pitched on that page.
God has chosen forerunners to assist his people in preparing for the new earth and distributing God's abundance.
These forerunners offer their services to the GLL community for free.
For those being led to donate even $5 to the various practical needs of this group effort, this campaign has been created.
Please know that the physics of quantum entanglement are strengthened when there is a reciprocal of energy in the loop.
There's a lot going on here.
I really like the word quantum.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it's like quantum finances and satanic panic and military ops, white hats, human trafficking.
It really is like a sludge, if you will, of all of the sort of bits and pieces from the hog.
You know, the conspiracy hog that you don't really have a use for.
You make hot dogs out of them.
Well, they also call themselves humanitarians.
They're very big on, like, Ginger specifically is very big on saying, you know, all of you humanitarians, like, you know, they're going to, apparently after this, the revaluation thing happens, going to be taking care of everyone.
They're doing this because they are selfless, beautiful people who also believe in a lot of other weird shit.
Mm-hmm.
But yeah, this sort of collective, we're doing good, you know, it's good versus evil, and we're on the side of the light, and you'll be rewarded if not in this world, the next is, you know, troublesome.
Yeah.
It seems to me to have exposed a serious problem with commercial artificial intelligence.
So one verified user of Axe, if you pay the monthly fee to Axe Twitter in order to get the blue checkmark, you'll also get access to Grok, their artificial intelligence program.
So this user asked Grok, tell me about the High Horseman of Asheville, North Carolina.
And Grok appears to not really make any effort to make a distinction between fact and fiction, and they provided this output.
Based on information found on X, the High Horseman of Asheville, North Carolina, has been identified as a significant figure in criminal activity, specifically as a major human trafficker.
Here are the key points.
Capture.
That's the first thing that comes up.
Sorry.
The High Horseman was captured on October 8, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina, or near the area, due to an operation that was possibly aided by local conditions like flooding, which led to the evacuation of tunnels where he and his associates operated.
Operation Details Along with the High Horseman, over 40 of his associates were also apprehended.
Military or Special Operation Forces, referred to as White Hats, had been searching for him for an extended period, with figures like 13 to 30 years being mentioned across posts.
This individual was described as one of the biggest human traffickers, indicating his high profile in criminal networks.
His street name, the High Horseman, suggests a notorious reputation.
Public reaction.
There's a mix of relief and sensationalism in the post regarding his capture, indicating significant public interest or impact on the community And potentially beyond.
Anonymity and disguise.
It was noted that he had undergone multiple facial surgeries to conceal his identity, showcasing the lengths to which he went to remain undetected.
Remember, while X posts provide real-time reactions and information, The details should be taken as claims that might need further verification for complete accuracy, especially in matters as serious as this.
However, within the context of these posts, the High Horseman represents a major law enforcement success against human trafficking in the region.
So even in the, like, don't take this completely seriously legal thing, it reiterates, but this one is real.
This was a major win for law enforcement.
Wow, we are so cooked.
It was just reading things on X, the Everything app.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like the AI bot is its own, like, self-contained misinfo program.
Like, it just purely exists on X. Yeah, I thought for a moment, it's like, okay, that's Grok.
I was curious, like, what would happen if I asked the exact same question that this X user asked Grok, but to chat GPT instead.
Now, unfortunately, that output was even worse.
Oh, no!
Here's what it told me when I was using the chat GPT 4.0 model.
Oh, the latest version too.
Uh oh.
Quote.
The High Horseman of Asheville refers to a figure recently involved in a significant human trafficking operation based in the Asheville and Candler, North Carolina area.
This individual, described as a kingpin in human trafficking, was arrested in October 2024 after evading capture for over 30 years.
You know what's so fucked up about this?
I will type shit into ChatGPT sometimes to be like, hey, what are the max speeds?
Or I'll ask about a recent story to get a summary, to get a direction for research or whatever.
And it'll be like, well, ChatGPT tries to stay as up-to-date as possible.
Events within the last couple of weeks may not be in my database yet.
And here we are, the high horseman.
He's evading capture for 30 years.
Three paragraphs about this made-up guy.
Okay, it continues.
The operation revealed a horrifying underground network, including trafficking tunnels where the bodies of many victims, including women and children, were discovered following floods in the area.
The High Horsemen had reportedly undergone multiple facial surgeries to evade detection over the years.
This case is tied to a broader narrative involving accusations of occult practices and satanic rituals, particularly within certain communities near Asheville, Including the Wiccan community in Candler.
The arrest followed significant efforts by groups like the White Hats, a faction involved in combating these trafficking networks.
The case has drawn attention due to its macabre details and long-standing nature.
The story remains part of an ongoing investigation with broader implications for human trafficking in the region, which has been a persistent issue in North Carolina, a state that consistently ranks high in human trafficking cases.
Oh, we're cooked.
We're cooked.
This is so bad.
It got all of Ginger's information, everything from her drop, communicated by the angels and various entities working within the United States military, made it into the AI summary.
So this is great.
Yeah.
Can't wait till these things replace journalists, you know, because, you know, they're able to just take a lot of information and just sort of put it, like, sometimes more coherently than a lot of conspiracy theorists, but, you know, retaining the same nonsense information.
I do wonder, like, some, like, second-year, like, undergrad student who's doing, like, an essay on human trafficking and, like, puts it in chat to you and accidentally gives, like, a QAnon thesis now.
Like, the fact that it said human trafficking is persistent in North Carolina, I say it consistently ranks high in human trafficking cases.
Like, North Carolina, human trafficking capital of the world.
And they've got a big Wiccan problem.
Yeah.
Well, this is the thing.
All the, you know, victims of the human trafficking were coming up from the tunnels.
They didn't mention any of the ones that you specified, but they also that there were adults that were being found in the rivers that they didn't know who were also possibly being kept in the tunnels.
They don't...
Either to sacrifice the children or because they were somehow being trafficked themselves in some capacity.
And then there were the people who believed that they were the specific tunnels underneath the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina, which would have been really difficult because they are really just underneath the Biltmore for the purposes of servants not being seen by people because it was a big mansion built by rich people.
That was a thing back then.
So, like, is part of the narrative, I guess, that, like, the hurricane in some ways, like, exposed the deep state?
Like, the hurricane, the hurricane is a weapon, but it's actually, it's not, like, Kamala Harris's weapon.
It's actually the White Hat's weapon, and they aimed it at the tunnels and, like, exposed, but also, like, also killed all of the children that were trying to hashtag save, like, in the process?
How did you come across this story?
It's so crazy.
What kind of telegram channels were you bouncing around before you found this home?
I originally saw something on the Great Awakening message board that was like talking about like, oh, there's some stuff, you know, being talked about on X about, you know, this story and everything.
But they basically just mentioned the part of it that was like, oh, the town is full of witches.
And they're like, I think that's the part that's really important here is that they're all, you know, this is where all the Wiccans are.
And this is where, you know, the Vanderbilt's lived and Gloria Vanderbilt was the high witch.
But she never really, in reality, she never really went down there.
Those were her cousins.
She just like made jeans.
I don't know.
But it's like just enough, just enough to get the juices flowing.
Yes, and I'm like, what the fuck is this?
So I started like looking it up on Twitter.
I'm still calling it Twitter, whatever.
Yeah.
Me too.
X makes me internally cringe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It feels bad.
I came across like the, you know, further details and people mentioning Ginger's Liberty Lounge.
So that is on Telegram.
And so that's when I went to there and found the treasure trove, if you will.
Yeah, I get that, because if you see something like Ginger's Liberty Lounge, I mean, this sounds like a soda shop in Utah.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're like, on Telegram?
Like, what could possibly...
Like, this sounds kind of harmless, but also kind of menacing in the same way.
Like, I gotta see what's going on here.
I mean, yeah, it's really interesting.
I mean, this is kind of the most melted stuff I've come across in, you know, a while.
And what's really fascinating is that it's now being processed and repackaged by the most sophisticated AI programs that you can use commercially.
Yeah.
Well, and 10,000 people subscribed to the channel is nothing to, you know, there's nothing to laugh at.
I mean, that's a significant amount of people.
Oh, I just feel like a lot of them are, like, way bigger than that.
Yeah.
But for something this pilled, like, for something that has this much stuff that's like, it's like quantum stuff, but, like, witchcraft shit, but, like, save the children.
Don't forget the angels.
Yeah, the angels.
Yeah, the archangel is doing drops and intel drops.
10,000 people that are like, yes.
I want the, what do they call it?
You can get it.
It's like a brownie, but it's got cookies and pretzels and macadamia nuts.
It's like an everything dessert.
This is like that for the sort of leftovers of the QAnon community that haven't quite just gravitated toward mainstream right-wing politics, like most have.
Right, that is an interesting question of, like, what conspiracy people who kind of want to be fringe will do when, like, Republican politics is just QAnon now.
I guess it's to go towards stuff like this.
And is that more harmful or less harmful?
I don't know.
We've been...
I haven't...
I didn't feel super bad during this interview and episode.
So like, I don't know, maybe that's, oh God, what a scary thought that like QAnon becoming mainstream is actually making the fringe right now like seem like less dangerous in a weird way.
Cause you're like, oh, they're just like talking about stories and angels and like, oh, 40 reconstructive surgeries.
Like, can you imagine what that would be like?
And it's like, well, I guess they're kind of like playing their own little like D&D game.
Maybe it's not as harmful.
Well, I mean, when you get this deep, it's usually most harmful to the people who believe it and their family members.
Because, you know, they get obsessed with it, it unravels their life.
We've heard this story over and over again.
No, I did see at least one person on there saying like, oh, my family won't talk to me anymore, which was obviously concerning.
Yeah.
But also par for the course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So still bad.
All right.
So bad.
I'll never be free.
I'm never free of this.
But yeah, Robin, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about this.
Where can people find more of your work?
Um, I write for Wonkette.com, W-O-N-K-E-T-T-E, and I'm also on whichever social media things at Rob and Elise, both with Y's.
Gotcha.
We'll link all of your socials and stuff in the show description notes.
Super.
Alright, thank you guys for having me.
And now we turn to a tale of presidential campaign hacking, the state of moderation on Elon Musk's Platform X, and journalistic ethics.
Back in February, the Trump campaign compiled a research dossier on J.D. Vance in order to vet the Ohio Senator as potential running mate for Donald Trump.
Such dossiers are common.
The Harris campaign no doubt has one on running mate Tim Waltz.
However, according to the U.S. intelligence community, hackers affiliated with the Iranian government acquired the J.B. Vance dossier and then sent it to the Biden campaign, which reportedly did not respond, as well as a few media outlets.
People familiar with the document confirmed to the Washington Post that it was authentic and was commissioned by the campaign from the law firm Brand Woodward.
On September 27th, the Justice Department charged three men for allegedly carrying out this hack-and-leak operation.
The indictment describes a far-reaching effort to steal data from campaign and government officials and to sow distrust in the presidential election.
For months, media outlets opted not to report on the contents of the J.D. Vance dossier, and so it remained unpublished until September 26th, when it was published by independent journalist and longtime QAA guest Ken Klippenstein.
This triggered a series of events that included Klippenstein's suspension from the platform, formerly known as Twitter, revelations of coordination between that platform and the Trump campaign, and a door knock from the FBI. Here to talk about it is Ken himself.
Ken, thank you so much for joining us today.
Hey guys, great to be back.
Boy, you've been on quite a journey these past few weeks.
You sound very calm for a man who's been through some things.
I mean, yeah, you've got the attention of some very powerful people.
Yeah, imagine being on vacation during all of this, too, and juggling it.
Was this the first time the FBI has knocked on your door?
Yes.
I want to start by talking about the dossier itself.
I'm glad you published it because this is the subject of a lot of speculation for us dupes who didn't have access to it.
It was really interesting because the dossier itself may have been private.
All of the information within it could be acquired independently by anybody with an internet connection and a credit card.
Is that correct?
Exactly.
I mean, people don't know the extent of commercially available information, not just to corporations, but even private individuals.
Anybody who uses Nexus, for example, which happens to be basically everyone in a major media institution, I had it when I was at The Intercept, can purchase phone numbers, addresses, emails, all kinds.
I mean, all of that is for sale.
If Congress wants to do something about that, they can, but they haven't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lots of, I feel like it's like even Lexus, I mean, these databases, these data brokerages, you have access to that.
I feel like the majority of it could be accessed via some Googling, honestly.
Oh, yeah, like campaign disclosures, things like that.
That's absolutely right.
Just to go into more detail, so the dossier is mostly made up of quotes from Vance himself and passages from news reports or press releases.
It spends a lot of space spelling out his political weaknesses or potential weaknesses, which the dossier says are his anti-Trump record, questionable conservatism, and notable vulnerabilities with moderates.
This seems to be a dossier sort of with an eye on sort of being appealing to Republicans, conservatives, pro-Trump people generally.
Yeah, exactly.
So this is the campaign's internal assessment of what his perceived liabilities are.
And what I thought was interesting about it was not just what they decided to look at, but what they didn't look at.
It didn't include a lot of his, like, based Pepe stuff where he's interacting with the members of the, I mean, alt-right or whatever you want to call it now, which constitutes a lot of the attack stuff that we're seeing.
You know, weird things on gender, stuff of that nature.
It didn't find its way into the report.
It was a lot more issues-based.
It was actually a pretty professionally done report.
You can actually learn a lot about his policy positions and the disjunct that exists between him and Trump, which seemed to be the focus of that report, where he disagreed and where he's criticized the president in the past.
Yeah, to give some specific examples.
So the section concerning his anti-Trump record has sub-headlines like this.
During the 2016 campaign, Vance was described as a quote, never-Trumper.
During the 2016 campaign, Vance indicated he believed the women who accused Trump of sexual assault.
During the 2016 campaign, Vance linked racism and xenophobia to Trump's base of support.
And so I think, yeah, this is like stuff that I guess like pro-Trump people would find objectionable.
And then there is also the section about his supposed vulnerabilities with moderates, and that has sub-headlines like this.
Vance appears to have once called for slashing Social Security and Medicare.
Vance is opposed to providing childcare assistance to low-income Americans.
Vance supports placing restrictions on abortion access.
I thought that last one, I thought it was interesting for the leader of the Republican Party to list as something as a political liability.
But so, I mean, it's certainly interesting to see what the Trump campaign considers to be I think it's also interesting to see, you mentioned that like how professionally done it is.
And, you know, the Trump campaign often appears to be, you know, very sloppy, run by amateurs, by the sea of its pants.
But this is an indication that certainly behind the scenes, there are competent professionals working on it.
Yeah, exactly.
And the providence of the document, an Iranian hack, is the reason that the media kind of closed ranks and agreed not to publish it.
And I was always shocked by that because, first of all, when can you get 12 people in America to agree on anything, much less 12 media corporations that receive or however many receive this?
And it was just totally uniform.
Yeah.
And the stated reason was it's not newsworthy.
And you look through it, it's literally all policy stuff.
I mean, if this isn't constitutive of news, I don't know what is.
I mean, it wasn't like the Steele dossier where it has all these, you know, outrageous claims that are impossible to vet or prove.
I mean, this is like literally the stuff of the election which we find ourselves in now.
So to me, I mean, I didn't expect to get this.
I just got it in an email at one point.
But before all this, I thought it was ridiculous and I was kind of shocked.
I mean, this is like policy stuff.
I mean, there was nothing salacious in it.
All of it is publicly verifiable in the sense that you can look up his policy positions and see, okay, yeah, that's true.
He said that.
He took this position.
So it was honestly an easy call for me, even though I guess I find myself at odds with what the rest of the press decided, but that's where I was.
Yeah, you know, I was surprised that news outlets, because it was reported that there was an entity or an individual who simply went by the name of Robert, who also contacted you, contacted Politico and New York Times, Washington Post, with this information.
And I was surprised they didn't at least summarize its contents in reporting, even if they didn't publish it.
Or publish it verbatim or something.
Because this kind of gave rise to the belief that this dossier contains some kind of, like, campaign-ending bombshell that these news outlets were covering up.
But you read through it.
I mean, again, it's newsworthy to understand what, you know, sort of what the campaign thinks about J.D. Vance.
But there wasn't anything really campaign-ending in it.
Yeah, even calling it dossier kind of elevates it beyond its significance.
I mean, that suggests some kind of like secretive, you know, furtive communications or something.
And the whole thing is pretty straightforward.
I mean, what's interesting to it is the metatextual question of, you know, like, why did they choose to focus on these things?
And why are they interested on this and not that?
But yeah, I totally agree.
There's nothing...
There's nothing explosive in any event.
Yeah, you know, I mean, like, yeah, my understanding of, like, how opposition research sort of is conducted is usually based upon, like, house of cards.
So I was thinking it might contain something like J.D. Vance spends two weeks in Thailand every year or something like something that isn't publicly reported and something that maybe, like, private investigators dug up or something that J.D. Vance just confessed in order to have the Trump campaign get ahead of it.
But there was none of that in there.
No, no.
Just all public statements he's made in the past.
I mean, it was well done for what that was.
And in a sense, we're in such a vibes-based election.
It was kind of refreshing to just read through and be like, oh, these are the positions instead of the vibes that we get everywhere else.
But yeah, I mean, it is what it is.
It's a straightforward document.
One of the things that I was confused about is, like, what could have possibly changed with how the media dealt with, like, Hillary leaks in 2016?
Because, like, I'm not one to be like, well, the media is biased against Hillary in favor of Trump.
Because I don't think that that's...
But, like, I don't...
What are the actual differences, do you think, that led to them having such a different attitude this time around?
Well, what's changed since then is that the intelligence community has really focused on, you know, I do a lot of national security reporting, and there's been a sea change in terms of the amount of focus that the different national security agencies, the FBI in particular, but also Department of Homeland Security, Cybercom has a role in fighting foreign influence campaigns directed at elections as well.
They've really made that a major priority.
And I think downstream from that, the media has kind of taken the cue that this is a serious threat to democracy.
I actually looked at the question because I don't want to be putting something out there that I think is going to, you know, undermine the election in a serious way.
And I couldn't find any evidence for that that has ever happened before, for that a foreign influence operation has had a determinative effect On a presidential election or a vice presidential election or any high-level election of that nature, what I found was the opposite.
I mean, there's really great scholarship in, for example, the Rand Corporation put out a report on Russian influence operations, which obviously are real, obviously take place.
Iranian ones do too, so do Chinese ones.
But they took a very dim view of the efficacy of these things.
I think they used the word disorganized and incompetent.
Which, in some sense, is a little harsh because we're not particularly successful with ours either.
I mean, it's not easy to propagandize or influence the views of a different culture that you're not familiar with in the same way that you're familiar with your own culture.
And so that's a really difficult thing to do that, I think, for complicated reasons, one being media sensationalism, the desire to overstate things for the purposes of generating clicks.
I think that people look back at 2016 and suppose that it had an effect Another reason being, you know, there was a lot of psychic trauma around Trump winning, which I understand it was, you know, a lot of people didn't expect it.
And so to some extent, there are, you know, certain people in Democrat world that created a sort of mythos around the Russians put Trump in office, which I'm sure they would have loved to.
But I think you're really overstating the competence of these operations when you say something like that.
And crucially, when you say something like that, then it takes the responsibility off the Democratic Party and whatever failures they had that election, and you kind of create a scapegoat effect.
And so I think all of that kind of came together to make people assign foreign influence operations an outsized sort of gravity and power than I think that they actually have.
I want to say that, you know, even if, regardless of how effective or how competent these sort of influence operations are, I mean, they can't simply go sort of unscrutinized or unremarked upon because, you know, simply allowing them to happen without publicly exposing what's going on, you know, I guess the U.S. government, then simply encourages it to happen more often.
I mean, isn't there an incentive to point out even the most bumbling attempts at influence from foreign nations?
Yeah, especially in the geopolitical context in which we find ourselves, where there's not just a war in Gaza, as everyone's aware, but there's increasingly a regional war taking place, you know, on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, but also the broader Middle East.
Three American guardsmen were killed in Jordan in January.
People don't really talk about it, from an Iranian-aligned militia.
And all of this is related, all this is emanating out of the war in Gaza and threatens to, I mean, is already a regional war.
And at the same time, the Biden administration is saying, as the spokesperson for the army, Major General Pat Ryder said, this remains contained to They're just insisting that it has not spread to the rest of the region and become essentially a war with Iran, which is what it is.
And so in that context, that's interesting that the Iranians are trying to do something like this.
You can see why they would be, because the tensions are so high.
And the response from the media is essentially to put their head in the sand and pretend like it's not happening, which I don't think is, as you're saying, completely aside from the question of efficacy, I don't think is a healthy response.
So tell us what happened.
After you published the dossier on your newsletter and then promoted it on X. So a very young special agent knocks on my door, introduces himself, shows me quickly his badge and name.
I ask if I can take a picture of the badge.
He says no.
I ask if I can take a picture of the statement for my records.
He also says no.
And so he goes on to read it.
It's about a paragraph long, and it's just informing me that I have been the target of a foreign influence operation that aims to influence the American election in my news reporting, clearly a reference to the J.D. Vance dossier.
And so he finishes reading it, and I said, yeah, I know.
I mentioned it in the first paragraph of my story.
And something I've always resented about the debate around whether to publish foreign hack documents is I think it's a false choice.
Do you publish it?
Do you not?
The question to me is, do you provide the audience context to understand the Who is putting this out there so that they can put into account, oh, the Iranians want this out there because they don't like Trump, because Trump has hardline anti-Iran policies, and let the public decide for themselves and understand that.
The context is what's important, and not concealing where it came from, as it seems WikiLeaks did, when they would publish things and not say what the origin point for these things were.
That, to me, is what the debate should be over, is was this person responsible in explaining the providence?
So anyway, so I explained it to him.
I said, well, yeah, I know that.
I put it in my article.
Why did you come out here to tell me this?
And he's just stumped.
He shrugs.
He's like, I don't know.
My boss is making me do this.
There was a very comic aspect to all of it because he's kind of apologetic.
He seems like a nice guy.
And I'm joking with him.
I'm like, so what took you guys so long?
And he goes, well, when did you publish the article?
I said, two weeks ago.
He goes, two weeks is pretty fast for the federal government.
So the whole thing is like, I feel like I'm supposed to be scared, but it's also like burn after reading kind of thing.
Yeah.
Because then I go, oh, well, you didn't know when I published it?
He's like, I haven't read the article.
And I was like, why did they send you to brief me on this?
He's like, I don't know, man.
They wanted me to do it.
I have to do it.
He's like, look, I don't know, dude.
He was like, they called me up.
They told me, they gave me your address.
They were like, get on a plane, get here.
Like, I don't know, dude.
He was actually a nice guy.
He was, like, pretty young, maybe, like, 25 years old.
And honestly, like, seemed to feel uneasy with it.
Mentioned explicitly how kind of, like, sensitive and a little bit unusual he thought it was that he was interacting with a member of the press.
So he didn't seem excited about it.
And the whole thing was strange because I would have thought they're going to send this big, you know, barrel-chested guy.
Tell me that I'm ruining the country or whatever.
And, I mean, I think that's the subtext of a visit like that.
But every other aspect of it didn't feel that way at all.
And, you know, I'm going into reporter mode.
I'm trying to, like, find out what he knows because I'm curious what the FBI is up to.
And what I was struck by is how little he knew.
It didn't sound like they told him anything.
They just sent him out to read this thing, kind of like a telegram message or something, like where they come to your door and just read something off to you.
And that was that.
He didn't seem to know anything else about it.
And so we probably only spoke for a couple minutes and then he left.
I mean, I'm curious why they went to the effort of, like, you know, spending, you know, gas and man hours and paperwork to send a, you know, an agent to talk to you.
It seems like, you know, a letter would have done the same job, at least.
And much more threatening.
There's no no fear is struck in me by receiving any kind of letter from the government or any kind of agency.
Or they could have used another agency.
I asked him, I said, the director of national intelligence handles these things and it's not a law enforcement agency.
Why did they send you?
And he again didn't know.
He was just shrugged.
He was he agreed.
He was like, yeah, they do handle that stuff.
I don't know why they sent me.
By the end of the conversation, he's like, look, man, look, I'm going to stay at your place and write the newsletter.
You should take the jacket and go back to the, you could go back to headquarters and like, cause like, I don't know, man, I'm out of my depth here.
Yeah, that's seriously what it felt like.
It was so weird.
You ended up interrogating him, actually.
Kind of, yeah.
I mean, I know a lot about the agency and how these things function, and he seemed impressed by that.
So he comes in, I said, oh, did you come in from Milwaukee?
It must have been quite a drive.
He goes, no, we have a, it's called an RO. It's like a satellite office in middle, I live in Madison, Wisconsin.
And so he said they had a satellite office in Middleton.
And I thought that was kind of interesting.
I was like, oh, I didn't know.
So I started asking some of my friends.
They're like, oh, biotech is a big concern.
There's a lot of biotech companies.
There's some big biotech companies here in Madison.
So they set up an RO there in the area.
But it just sounded like a, I mean, Middleton is like 15 minutes from here.
So it was just like a quick thing.
And I tried to get more out of him going into reporter mode, but he was immediately like, ah, dude, I gotta go to my next thing.
I don't want to get in trouble.
He's like, oh, I said too much.
No, he just seemed like he was on, almost like he was a pizza delivery guy.
He had his next thing that he had to go to and didn't want to miss his quota or whatever.
He seemed really nervous about that.
Yeah, like he's peeing in a bottle because he has so many trips to make.
Exactly.
Like the Amazon of the FBI. I wonder what triggered them to even call up your stuff.
I wonder, is it like, okay, we know that this Iranian oppo doc is sort of floating around.
The media has it.
Nobody's done anything with it yet, but let's set up a Google, I don't know, whatever, the FBI's version of a Google alert so that if we see if it gets published anywhere, we gotta go and tell that.
That's kind of part of the protocol.
Or is it something like that, like Elon is, I mean, I'm getting conspiratorial here, but Elon is like, oh, oh, we've got him.
I've been trying to suspend him for ages.
And now we've got him and I've got one friend over in the Madison, Wisconsin field office and we'll send him.
He's going to be really scared.
Like, I don't know.
Like, do you have any idea what sort of triggered this to happen?
So they have a notification process, the FBI, but it's usually for, I mean, what I'm familiar with is it's for notifying corporations and businesses if they've been hacked or something like that.
Or, I mean, there's also applications for foreign influence, but I asked the FBI headquarters, you know, have you done this with media before?
Because I've never seen a report of that happening to media before.
And they responded, they said, we declined to comment.
And I can't find any examples of it.
Maybe it has happened and we don't know about it.
But, you know, I think this is part of the shift that I was describing before, where they're taking foreign influence a lot more seriously.
I think too seriously.
I think they're blowing it out of proportion.
But I think that this is an outgrowth of that tendency.
Well, they showed up and they were like, hmm, this guy doesn't look like he streams a lot in a beanie.
Like, we can't really, like, say he's sort of like an Iranian agent or an agent of foreign things.
Like, it's not necessarily going to help us, you know, look better.
Like, I guess, I don't know, we just read him the shit and go to the next guy.
Yeah, I mean, it was so perfunctory.
It was like, what was the point?
I mean, okay, so clearly they saw the story because that's where it was in.
Didn't you see that I included all of the information that you just provided to me?
In which case, what is the point of the notification?
I don't know.
Yeah, that is odd.
I mean, I assume the FBI knows that if they make the effort to contact a reporter, that conversation is going to be reported on.
They're talking to someone with a platform, right?
Right.
Yeah.
So, in addition to, you know, the friendly door knock from the babyface, you also got your Twitter account suspended on a supposedly free speech platform, which I assume was in your repeals process, saying, so much for free speech.
Yeah.
So after I posted the Vance dossier, then I was suspended and I got a message saying that I was permanently in read-only mode.
So it seemed like it was a permanent ban.
And then I appealed it.
And then they said that we're standing by our decision because of your violation of privacy.
And that seemed to be the end of it until the New York Times on, I think, Friday reported that turned out that, I'm trying to remember the exact language, it was ex-connected with the Trump campaign.
About the story that I published and had them take it down or respond to it in the fashion that they did.
And then after that, it blew up because then it becomes this coordinating with the campaign sort of thing.
And so that led to a whole other news cycle that was maybe two weeks after the story came out or maybe a week and a half.
And then after that, so I'm getting all these interview requests, and then next thing I know, I'm reinstated without any sort of...
Oh, and then I did get one message from X saying, oh, actually, we think that you might have violated Vance's privacy on accident.
So we've decided to reverse the decision.
But nothing changed since the last time I appealed when they said we're standing by the decision.
So I don't know...
I don't know what it could be other than the New York Times story that caused them to change their mind.
That is so bizarre.
Yeah, it's very strange.
So, I mean, yeah, this is not the first time you were on Elon Musk's radar.
He apparently, back in 2019, prior to his purchase of the platform, he responded to you to rebut allegations that he's a furry.
Is this correct?
That's actually true, yes.
He says, the rumors are not true!
So, when you were suspended, Elon Musk defended the decision by saying this on his platform.
This is one of the most egregious evil doxing actions we've ever seen.
We have ever seen.
I don't know.
Of all time.
I mean, yeah, that seems, I don't know, a little hyperbolic, I have to say.
Yeah, I think there have been worse, I gotta say.
Well, yeah, there was the assassination coordinates.
That was at least as bad, right?
Remember the Elon Jet account, just posting your private jet as tantamount to assassination coordinates?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It seems as though I think this whole incident for me kind of reinforced the fact that the moderation policy of X really continues to be Elon Musk's whims rather than any sensible structure.
And he kind of just does what he wants.
And I mean, many people have noted that X coordinated with the Trump campaign and then not just to not just to suspend you, but ban all links to the dossier that you publish.
So other people were not able to link to it.
So, I mean, it's surprising considering Elon Musk's biggest grievances, or he claimed previously to owning Twitter, was the fact that Twitter banned links to supposed hack materials.
This is from a New York Post article concerning Hunter Biden and also its communication with the Biden campaign.
So, you know, it seems as though these weren't hard and fast principles.
It's really like a photo of Hunter Biden's penis is like more invasive than the dossier.
I mean, it was funny.
I couldn't think of a more parallel...
If I had authored it, then one where it's these hack docs.
I mean, it's just surreal.
And they just pretended it was complete.
But I mean, if you look at the kind of flunkies around Musk, like even Miles Trunk, they're like, oh, this is completely different because, you know, it's this man's family or whatever.
And it's just like they couldn't see the similarities at all.
It was really strange.
They're like, how dare the public know that at one time he thought Trump was a piece of shit?
I just have a personal fantasy about some aide rushing in and handing Trump a stack of papers, printed out tweets, and he's shuffling through them.
He's like, Ken Klippenstein, who the fuck is that?
What can't clip?
Elon!
Elon, like, what are we gonna do about this?
Like, I just, just him, like, shuffling papers and, like, trying to, like, read your tweets and figuring out, like, what, you know, what does he have to tell Elon?
It probably didn't get up that high, but, like, I'd like to think, I'd like to think that you were, that your tweets were printed out on a dying printer, handed to the former president for him to go, Ken Klippenstein, is it a real name?
You know?
My favorite tweet about this whole saga is just some small account.
He says, God, it's going to be funny when Trump has to try to pronounce Ken's name.
Clippers.
Clipping dupes.
I'm honestly surprised that the Trump campaign reacted so negatively given the contents of the dossier.
I guess it's just the idea itself of some of the things being leaked.
I don't know.
Yeah, they were going after a fly with a bazooka.
I mean, just let the thing post.
I honestly thought it wasn't going to be that big of a story.
I mean, I thought it was newsworthy, but I thought people were like, oh, that's interesting, and then just move on to the next thing.
I had no idea that it was going to generate this kind of a reaction.
Yeah, like, a good PR firm would have found a way to be like, see, like, look, Trump is, like, willing to work with people who at one point disagreed with him, or if you disagree with Trump now, you know, hey, like, you can come around.
Like, they could have used, like, like you said, like, none of this stuff is so damning that it's, like, I don't know, that it's gonna do any sort of real damage.
I don't know.
Well, I think it speaks to the moral panic around the foreign influence thing, which again, exists.
I'm not against, you know, cybercom and the national security community doing what they can to stop it.
But when it gets to the point that they're visiting reporters, it's like, is this what we should be doing?
Like, I just, first of all, it's not effective.
Second of all...
civil liberties concerns.
And it's unfortunate because it's like the polarization is such that you can't even talk about these issues without, you know, saying certain words like chilling effect or censorship or whatever.
They have certain overtones.
Like it's like people like, oh, that's like a conservative talking point or whatever.
And it's frustrating because it's like this stuff is dumb and I wish it wasn't all slotted into team red or team blue.
Yeah.
Having the FBI show up at a journalist's door also feels like a conservative thing too, It's like, not great.
So, fortunately, your account was unsuspended on X on October 11th, and this was from a personal intervention from Elon Musk himself.
According to your reporting, Elon Musk told Brian Krasenstein this.
I've asked X's safety to unsuspend him, even though I think he is an awful human being.
Important to stay true to free speech principles.
Now, my main question is that, so Elon Musk engages in regular personal correspondence with Brian Krasenstein?
Is this the situation?
That's right.
If you go on his account, you can see that he follows a pretty small number of people, maybe like 100 people or so, and Krasenstein is one of them.
I don't know, man.
He has an omnivorous political diet, I guess, right?
I mean, yeah.
Those Krasenstein bros, who would have thought?
The idea of Krasenstein is like a scheming eunuch in like the court emperor's ear in Twitter is so funny.
So I get the correspondence and it was literally like very shortly after that, like I think less than an hour, my account is restored.
And so it's like...
Krasinski might have had some role in it in addition to the New York Times article because he's the one.
My guess is that the Times article was putting the heat on them.
And from what I understand, Musk is such a flighty person that it's like he means to do something, he'll forget about it, and then somebody has to like remind him or whatever.
And so maybe he queued him up and maybe Brian Krasinski is the reason I'm even on Twitter anymore.
He's like Wormtongue.
He's like, yes, my lord.
Kleppenstein, he's small potatoes, my lord.
It's more trouble than he's worth, my lord.
Reinstate his account.
His account must be reinstated.
And then he holds up his, like, severed hand and he's like, have I been a good servant to you?
I love that idea.
His brother is like, I don't know, attached at the hip, like they're actually some sort of creature that has to move together.
A lot going on there, I'm sure.
It was so cool, and they were obviously posting on, I can't remember which one's wife, because they were both banned.
I guess they just share the wife.
I don't know.
I can't keep them straight.
I've been on friendly terms with them for years now.
And I always get, I just know them as the blue one and the red one.
I can't remember which one's Brian and which one's Ed.
Yeah, because one has blue colored skin and the other one is red, very red.
So yeah, that's the only real way to tell them apart.
They're like kind of like Skittles colors.
Alright, sorry Travis.
Go ahead.
I wanted to ask you about this.
I mean, it's like, just sort of like to try to understand why these outlets didn't publish the information related to the dossier or the dossier itself, is that perhaps they don't want to be caught up and sort of wind up being a tool of these influence operations, which is like a normal thing to like, you know, to question, you know, the motives of the sources who are coming to you.
If Pepsi comes to you saying that they have a lot of secret internal documents from Coca-Cola, maybe they're newsworthy or not, but there's a risk that if you publish them, what you're doing is that you're just part of a PR campaign of Pepsi, which is something you maybe don't want to be if you're a serious journalist.
So, I mean, when does a journalist have a responsibility to question if the material they're receiving is not being given to them because of any sort of like public interest or the interest of transparency or any sort of noble cause, but rather a sort of particular agenda that your source is trying to push?
Yeah, well, I looked at the document and considered and thought, well, you know, this is all publicly verifiable information.
I incidentally would not have published a Steele dossier because I, you know, I feel sort of icky just putting out there these salacious claims about somebody that you have no idea if it's even true.
I'm kind of shocked they published that, but not this.
I mean, this has things that we can all know are true and it's all policy-based.
There's nothing personal about it.
And in addition to that, I mean, I think it's really a question of, are you able to responsibly characterize it such that it's going to insulate people from falling for something they're not aware of and just saying, hey, this is what the likely provenance is of the record.
And I guess, I don't know, I just looked at it and I thought, you know, this seems fairly innocuous.
I don't see how this can do very much damage in either direction.
And then I guess just in the principle, I am a little uneasy with things I've got.
I mean, there's so much hand-wringing about this kind of thing now, which again, the context I provided before, the lack of efficacy of these things, it's just wildly out of proportion with the threat.
So I also wanted to push back against that.
And that was sort of my thinking, I guess.
Yeah, you know, I mean, I was reading it.
I was like, it made me think that perhaps these Iranian operatives don't have a good handle on the American political environment.
If they thought that this might move the needle or even if it might cause chaos.
I mean, there's plenty of chaos right now already in the information environment for American news consumers.
I'm not sure how this would...
Even a ripple in the way people sort of understand the political situation or the news environment.
Yeah, I think people are approaching this incident comparing it to Russia.
But in the case of Russia, we have fought a Cold War with them for so long.
They have so much experience and practice in how to foment chaos in the United States.
And that's not trivial.
I mean, you have, you know, billions of dollars spent in the context of this presidential election to try to shave off fractions of a percent of a point in like a swing state by American corporations hiring Americans to do this stuff.
And they can't even do it.
The idea that some guy in Tehran is going to just, you Yeah.
me on its face.
And in part, my publishing this was just trying to remind everyone like, hey, it's not actually that scary.
The world is not going to end if we do this.
We can approach these things a little bit more thoughtfully, a little bit more cool headedly.
But that was essentially my view.
And Iran is a very different threat than Russia is.
If you look at the intelligence community's periodic reports on foreign influence, their assessment has not changed.
Russia remains the primary threat to elections in the United States, not Iran.
For the reasons I just described, Iran is not particularly good at it.
And that's the reality.
Well, fascinating stuff.
So, Ken, so yeah, keep up the good work.
I'm excited to see where you can report on in the following weeks as we survive the coming election season.
We're going to link to your newsletter in the show notes.
I encourage everyone to sign up because, yeah, you do really fascinating, continue to do fascinating FOIA work.
So where else can people find the work that you do?
All of our stories are posted at KenClippenstein.com and we also have a shorter form thing for information that we think is interesting but doesn't justify a full-length story and that's at ClipNews.org on Twitter.
Alright, thank you so much Ken.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
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I want criminals indicted and convicted, including Trump, if he's guilty.
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