QAA Podcast - It Unfortunately Happens On X (E298)

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

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.

Thank you. If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 298. It unfortunately happens on X. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakitansky. 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, I think, like, for myself, who's perhaps like steeped in this stuff. It seems like, you know, everybody, you know, who 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 like the fact that like a quarter of U.S. adults do it often, considering this includes, you know, older Americans,

though, you know, 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 X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where accounts with blue check marks go viral by fabricating evidence of serious crimes, its AI program GROC 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 that makes viral claims so outrageous that even some QAnon accounts are pushing back against it. Then we'll be talking to Robin Pinocchio from Wonkett about how these bat-shit claims from a strange telegram channel have made their way to mainstream social media platforms. And finally, we'll be speaking to Ken Clippenstein 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 app. This feels like classic, classic 2020-era Q-A-A.

Yeah, it's really, thanks to Elon Musk for giving us all this material. Business is booming. You know, nothing bad. Elon Musk, he went down into the basement of the firehouse. He shut off the power grid. All of the ghouls and guys. 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 his way. So, yeah, let's get started because this is interesting because I sometimes wonder, like, what's the limit for right-wing conspiracist 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, you know, with no real substantial evidence. But surely sometimes, they get sick of being jerked around. And there's 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, the 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 live. 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 I followback true patriots. 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 to you. It needs to be live, Agar, and then some kind of statement.

So this account recently promoted baseless allegations that the Harris campaign running mate Tim Walts 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's 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 want it, but it's very obvious that they cheated. When this claim was repeated by an account called Leading Report, It was amplified by platform owner Elon Musk and several other right-wing influencers.

Bill Ackman also took the claim as true and decried the, quote, serious breach of journalistic ethics. Donald Trump himself ran with it on Truth Social, posting this. People are saying that Comrade 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. It does a kind of a boring Truth

Truth tweet Pretty standard stuff I don't feel like He authored this one himself Doesn't quite have the same juice You know As this authentic post 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

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, now who could possibly believe this nonsense? Well, how about the Congresswoman from Georgia's 14th District, Marjorie Taylor Green? 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. Cew 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. 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. Like, 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, like, now they don't know what to do. Like, they sort of, it's like a dog who's caught the back of the, of the, of the, the mailman's truck. So just to give her the smallest amount of credit, after Marjorie Taylor Green 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 that 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 actually think she's actually, I think she's, she's a change. She's a changing. She's a change 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, you know, 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 rubs 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 dog shit claims that you can find out 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, is 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 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 Kamla's been answering some questions, I feel like I disagree with that. Like during the recent town hall, when someone was like, my mom.

mom died because she didn't have access to health care because she was like wasn't on boarded 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 happen 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 and wouldn't have died here she would have died there definitely would not have been a fucking citizen oh yoy yoy well camilla 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 insurrectionist posted more screenshots of his correspondence with this supposed victim, people started noticing problems. For example, some emails had a comma place after the day of the week. Well, others didn't.

One email listed a date sent as like Friday, comma, August 9. Well, 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.

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, he's in the middle of typing it, like, that line. That's incredible. That'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 tricker, you know, coming home from

trick-or-treating just so, 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, 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 Walts had done something horrible. But a lot of, a lot of other, like, right-wing influencers actually really push 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 Walls 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. Or 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 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 insurrectionist just doesn't have the swag to repeat it.

There's a certain cultural energy you need. Yeah, maybe they were there before. Maybe they were there before black insurrectionists. And so they were kind of like, hey, man, like, we're kind of doing the lore. Like, we don't like your lore. Yeah, that's true. So war clandestine followed up with this satirical tweet. It's a Jatch, GPT image of Trump and I guess Santa Claus with like M-4s or M-4s or M-E.

16s and then breaking news exclamation for it i've been given a sworn affidavit from a top secret unnamed source the whistleblower confirms santa claus is real that he is endorsing trump for president i will be releasing proof in 40 pieces over the coming days stay tuned so he got he got his ass having a good time but he still had to hide replies as i can see from the same shot he still had even when he's making fun of somebody who's a worse conspiracy theory than him he's still got to hide the reply Now, it got so bad that some conspiracies started making conspiracy theories about why black insurrectionists was spreading such poorly substantiated conspiracy theories. So Jack Post-Biak said this.

That Tim Wall story feeling like planted disinfoam. There we go. So a conspiracy within the conspiracy, like, it's like, it's not just that this guy sucks and posted conspiracy theories. This feels like somebody from the deep state wanted one of us to post a conspiracy. It's a shitty conspiracy to do something. It's so funny to do this when you thought, when you were like, oh, is pizza Gabriel?

I don't know. It's kind of like, like how is meat like, like walnut sauce is more than this? I don't believe that. Yeah, the Jack Posobic of 2024 would think that the Jack Posobic of 2019 was doing a planted disinfo drop. I feel like a part of this is really like, like with everything, you got to be in on it early and all these fucking upstarts. They're fucking up our grift by trying to reinvent the wheel here.

Like, we've already, it's 2016 forever continually. Like, 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 like, there's evidence of like a child trafficking ring in the leaked DNC emails and go like, where? Like, go out. Go find for yourself. Look through.

they're 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 get you know convince themselves that they found something substantial but when you just like make up uh 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 claims are substantial but i can able to find like all of these flaws yeah it's interesting like Elon buying Twitter is 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 polytrius empire they all they all they all conquer the the universe but they get bored afterwards it's like fuck we have this 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 for two weeks they're like 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 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 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 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. Like, you're still, it still sucks. You're, like, bored. The only gratification you get is that the other side is pissed off. Yes. That's, like, not actually all that fun. That's not nice. No, it's not, 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? It's like, everything still sucks. Like, all the things that make you sad are still there, really. On October 9th, the fake news website before its 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 horsemen, along with 41 of his men. This sounds like a Humpty did like all the king's men. 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 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 check mark, 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 GROC and chat GPT. GROC, I expect, like anything built by Elon, fair enough.

But chat GPT 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 Pinakia, who wrote about what she found for Wonkette. So Robin, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, this was really fascinating find, both the spread of the story and, like, and its source, which is a real rabbit hole in itself.

Now, I mean, sometimes, like, these stories, like, they're, like, you know, they're crowdsourced or sometimes they come from, like, one individual random, like, 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 a Nisara gisara 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 Qadon-flavored conspiracy theories

where you have a military aspect, but then you. 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 has 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 that would be like a major motivation. But of course in reality it's like, you know, just like quirky bisexual women who like 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, you know, 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.

go into Hobby Lobby, like 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, like, 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, compromise. But Hobby Lobby still pure. I'm excited for. the Halloween posting for billed people because like some Christians do get really scared about Halloween because it's like they're the bad spirits you know it's it's it's they're ghosts and ghouls those are not good things that's only honestly it's one of my favorite times of the year just for that reason all the ex-satainists come out of the closet and they are the best oh yes yeah like the thousands of people tens of thousands of people that have supposedly been in evil Satanist cults so many of them yeah 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. Yeah, 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. so I mean here's 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 multi-vetted 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 functions basically just a lot like Q and on or other kind of people who claim to have secret intel is that they hype up these claims and that they have secret sources. But in this particular instance,

usually the gintel 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 Q&On 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. And this fella that they got, he was the king, hen 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, for 24. 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 so 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, you know, played out the frequencies, you know, got like some EVPs going in there.

You could hear them whispering. be like, 41 reconstruction surgeries. Yeah, I love the specific number she offers. It's like how many of the high horsemen'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 just 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 San Diego 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 like a hurricane, you know, evacuation zone. Like this, this feels harmless right now. I know I'm going to eat my words later, but it's just, it's nice. I'm, I'm having fun right now. It feels like a Charlie Brown Halloween special sort of story. 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 can tell me how lives have been ruined by this, 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 large. Wiccan community in the United States, if not the world. And by Wiccan, I'm meaning W I-C-C-A-N, which is witches and witchcraft envy of cult.

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 you know, 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, if it's a hotspot, maybe she's got a point. I was thinking that that she sounds really familiar and I was like, where have I heard it? I was like, have I come across

her posts 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, Carolyn, like if you listen to her voice, it sounds almost identical, like very similar rhythm. Yeah, I mean, I mean, like we were talking about online, like 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-packaged for, you know, the 21st century. And I mean, it's spooky because like it's very effective at like drawing people in, 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. 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 I talked about, it's 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. 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 you are in here, the more time you spelled you spend here you will see. Don't take my word for it. I found my home in GLLL after five years of bouncing around. Let me add ellipsies. If Ginger doesn't know the answer to her 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 of 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 anything. 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. 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 just see that they set up a give send go page. This is basically like the Christian right wing version of, you know, 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, oh, all right.

The physics of quantum entanglement are strengthened when there is a reciprocal of energy in the loop. There's a lot going on here. They 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 a, 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, are the revaluation thing happens going to be taken care of everyone. They're doing this because they are selfless, beautiful people who also believe in a lot of other weird shit.

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. Yeah, another interesting aspect of the story is that it seems to me to have exposed a serious problem with commercial artificial intelligence. So one verified user of X. Now, if you pay the monthly fee to X Twitter, in order to get the blue checkmark, you'll also get access to GROC, their artificial intelligence program.

So this user asked GROC, tell me about the high horseman of Asheville, North Carolina. And GROC 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 Ash, Nashville, 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 horsemen, 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. Significance. 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. Definitely, yeah. 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 ex-posts provide real-time reactions and information, the detail 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 serious. 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 bought as 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 GROC. I was curious, like, what would happen if I asked the exact same question

that this ex-user asked Rock, but to chat GPT instead. Now unfortunately, that output was even worse. So here's what... 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 24

after evading capture for over 30 years. You know what's so fucked up about this is like, I will type shit into chat GPT sometimes to be like, hey, what's the, like, what are the max speeds? Or I'll type about a recent, 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, chat GPT, strives to stay as up to date as possible

like 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 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 horseman 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 like 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 is doing, like, an essay on human trafficking and, like, puts it in a chat, TBD and accidentally gives, like, a Q&ON thesis now.

Like, the fact that it said, if I got it said human trafficking is persistent. in North Carolina. I stayed 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 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, or, you know, either to sacrifice the children or, you know, 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 Beltmore in Asheville, North Carolina, which would have been really difficult because they are really just underneath the beltmore for like the purposes of, you know, 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 even, where did, how did you come across this story? It's so crazy. Like, where, like, what, what kind of telegram channels were you bouncing around before you found this home? No, 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, uh, X about, um, 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, uh, you know, this is where all the Wiccans are. And this is where, you know, the Vanderbilt lived in 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 than 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 possible, what, like this sounds kind of harmless, but also kind of menacing in the same way. Like, what, we, I got to, I got to see what's going on here. I mean, yeah, it's really

interesting. I mean, this is the kind of the most melted stuff I've come across in, you know, a while. And it's, what's really fascinating is, it's now being processed and repackaged by the most sophisticated AI programs that you can use commercially. Yeah. Well, and 10,000 people subscribe 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 meant 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, it'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 like, is doing like drops and like Intel drops. Like there are 10,000 people that are like, yes, like this, like I want the, what do they call, you can get, it's like, it's like a brownie, but it's like got cookies and pretzels and like macadamia nuts. It's like on everything. It's like an everything dessert.

This is like that for the sort of leftovers of the Q&on community that haven't quite just gravitated toward like mainstream right wing politics, like most have. Right. That is an interesting question of like what conspiracy people who kind of want to befringe will do when, like, Republican politics is just Q and on 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, and episode. So, like, I don't know, maybe, 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 because 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. Like maybe that's, maybe it's not like as harmful. Well, I mean, like when you get this deep, it's usually what is 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 fight more of your work?

I write for Wonkett.com, W-O-N-K-E-T-T-E. And I'm also on whichever social media things at Rob and Elise, both with Wise. You gotcha. We'll link all of your, all of your socials and stuff in the, in the show description notes. Super. All right. 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 Walts. 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 a 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 described. 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 journalists and longtime QAA guest Ken Clippenstein. This triggered a series of events that included Clippenstein'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. I'm 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. And I'm glad you publish it because this is the subject of a lot of speculation for us dupes who didn't have access to it. Because, you know, 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 the Lexus, I mean, these databases, these data brokerages, Even if you have access to that, I feel like the majority of it could be access via some Googling, honestly. Oh, yeah, like campaign disclosures, things like that. That's absolutely right. Just to go in more detail. So the dossier is like mostly made up of like 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 this 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 child care assistance to low-income Americans. Vance supports placing restrictions on abortion access. Yeah, I thought that last one I thought it was interesting for that, you know, the Trump,

for the, you know, the leader of the Republican Party to list as something as a political liability. But so, I mean, it's certainly interesting, like to see what the Trump campaign considers to be political liabilities. 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 in 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 receiving? 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 steel 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. It's 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 at 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 like Politico. and New York Times, Washington Post with this information. And I was surprised they didn't at least like 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 JD Vance. But I don't, yeah, there wasn't anything really campaign ending in it. Yeah, even calling a 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 metatechual 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 of it. Yeah, you know, I mean, like, yeah, my, my understanding of,

like how opposition research service conduct 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 is 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 at 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 use the word disorganized and incompetent, which in some sense is a little harsh because it would be hard for it. 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 that it had an effect

that it didn't. 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 and 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, 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, 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, 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 original war taking place, you know, on Hasbola 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 of this is emanating out of the war in Gaza and threatens the, 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 Israel. 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 on your newsletter and then promoted it on X. So a very young special agent knocks on my door, introduces himself, shows me his badge and name. I ask if I can take a, and says that he has to read a statement to me. And 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 and I said, yeah, I know. I've 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 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 and they, because Trump has

hardline Iranian anti-Iran policies and let the public decide for themselves and understand that, that like 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 provenance? 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 goes, and he's just stumped. He shrugs. He's like, uh, 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 like it's also like burn after reading kind of thing yeah because then I go oh well you didn't know when I publish 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 no 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 unusually thought it was. 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'd send this big, you know, barrel chested guy to 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 to 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 he left.

I mean, well, 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. And 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 like, 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 just go back to headquarters and like, because 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. And I mean, I know a lot about the agency and all these things function. And he was, he seemed impressed by that because, um, 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, um, 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 started asking some of my friends. They're like, oh, biotech is a big concern. There's a lot of biotech company. There's some big biotech companies here in Madison. So they set up a, 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, oh, dude, I got to go to my next thing. I don't want to get in trouble. He's like, oh, I said too much. Yeah. No, he did even.

He just seemed like he was on, almost like he was like a pizza delivery guy. Like 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. Yeah, exactly. Like the Amazon of the FBI. I wonder, I wonder what triggered like them to even call up your stuff. Like, is it like, I wonder, is it like, okay, we know that this like Iranian, you know, like,

apodok is sort of like floating around. The media has it. Nobody's done anything with it yet, but like, let's set up a Google, I don't know, whatever, the FBI's version of like a Google alert so that if we see if it gets published anywhere, like we got to go and tell that, you know, that's kind of part of the protocol. Or is, 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 for, 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 there's, 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, 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 our Iranian agent or an agent of foreign thing. Like it doesn't, 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. 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 was 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 the friendly door knock from the baby face, 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. 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 like blew up because then it becomes this, you know, coordinating with the campaign sort of thing.

And so that led to a whole other news cycle that was like, that was like 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 got a, 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, right. 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 this platform. This is one of the most egregious evil doxing actions we've ever seen. We have ever seen it at 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 got to say.

Well, yeah, there was the assassination coordinates. That was at least as bad, right? You remember the Elon Jet account, just posting your private jet as Tiamount to assassination coordinates? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, 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 beat 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 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 a surprising considering Elon Musk's biggest grievances, so he claimed, previously to owning Twitter was the fact that Twitter, like, banned links to supposed hacked materials. This is from a New York Post article concerning Hunter Biden, and also it's a communication with the Biden campaign. So, you know, it seems as though, you know, these weren't, you know, hard and fast principles.

Truly, 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 situation if I had authored it than one where it's these hack doc. I mean, it's just surreal. And they just pretended it was conflict. But I mean, if you look at the kind of flunkies around Musk, like even Miles Strung, 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, they couldn't see the similarities 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 think I just have like a personal fantasy about like some aid rushing in like, you know, and handing Trump like a stack of papers like printed out tweets. And he's shuffling through him. He's like, Ken Clippinstein. Who the fuck is that? What can't clip? Elon? Like, what are we going to 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, Kent Glippinstein, 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, clippin' clippin doops.

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 so. of their 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 thought, I honestly thought it wasn't going to be that big of a story. I mean, I thought it was newsrely, 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, 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 you said, none of this stuff is so damning that it's like, I don't know, that it's going to 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, 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. You know, it's like, right. Not great. so fortunately your account was unsusended 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 Krastenstein is one of them.

I don't know, man. He has an omnivorous political diet, I guess, right? Those Krasenstein bros, who would have thought? The idea of Krasnstein is like a scheming eunuch in, like, the court emperor's ear in Twitter is so funny. Well, I get, 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, Krasisi 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 pointing 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, maybe Brian Krassey's the reason I'm even on Twitter anymore. He's like, he's like, worm tongue. He's like, yes, my lord. 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, they're actually like some sort of creature that like has to move together. A lot going on there, I'm sure It was so cool And they were like obviously posting on I can't remember which one's wife

Because they were both banned I forgot about this 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 head Yeah because one one has blue colored skin And the other one is red Very red. So, yeah, this is the only real way to tell them apart. They're, like, kind of like, like, Skittles colors. All right.

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, 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 your, of the sources who are coming

to you, you know, if, like, if Pepsi comes to you saying that they love have a lot of secret internal documents from Coca-Cola, maybe there's newsworthy or not, but there's the 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, you know, you maybe don't want to be if you're, you know, if you want, if you're a serious journalist. So, I mean, when does a, when does a journalist have a responsibility to question if they're, the material they're receiving is not being given them because of any sort of like public interest or the interest of transparency or any sort of noble cause, rather a sort of particular agenda that, that the, that your source is trying to

push. Yeah, well, I looked at the document considered and I thought, well, you know, this is all publicly verifiable information. I, incidentally, would not have published a steel 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 publish 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 are not aware of and just saying, hey, this is what the likely provenance of is of the record.

And I guess I don't know. I just looked at it. I thought, you know, this seems fairly innocuous. I don't see how this can do very much damage in their 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, 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, you know, the information environment for, you know, American news consumers. I'm not sure how this would make even a ripple in the way people sort of understand, you know, 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 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 know,

do a fishing exploit and hack someone's email and then do a better job than, I don't know, like Goldman Sachs or something. It's just, it seems absurd to 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 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 price. 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 working 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 Ken Clippinside.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 Clip Newsorg on Twitter. All right. Thank you so much, Ken. Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes.

For everything else, we've got a website, qa-a-a-a-podcast.com. Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. We have auto-keyed content based on your preferences. I just want to point out one thing, and that is that all of the following can be true. I want criminals indicted and convicted, including Trump, if he's guilty. I would hate to see a former president convicted or locked up. I'd also hate to see a former president commit a crime without accountability or repercussions. If a Democrat commits a crime, then they deserve to be indicted and convicted.

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