Trump campaign connected with Elon Musk’s X before it blocked links to hacked materials

New York
CNN
 — 

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign connected with Elon Musk’s X last month to discuss hacked Trump campaign materials circulating on the social media platform before X blocked links to the files and banned the independent journalist who published the materials, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.

The research dossier published by Ken Klippenstein, allegedly the result of an Iranian government-supported hacking operation, contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and materials the campaign had put together on Sen. JD Vance before Trump named him his running mate. The dossier published by Klippenstein contained some of Vance’s personal information, including his home address and part of his social security number.

Following his publication of the dossier on Substack last month, Klippenstein shared that his X account had been suspended for violating the platform’s rules on posting private information. An X spokesperson told CNN at the time that Klippenstein had been temporarily suspended from the platform “for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information,” but Klippenstein later shared a screenshot showing that he had been permanently banned.

A person familiar with the matter told CNN on Friday that the Trump campaign had a conversation with X officials about the hacked materials before Klippenstein was banned and links to his newsletter were blocked. The person said the campaign did not push X officials to remove links to the materials and that X had made the decision. A spokesperson for X did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

The New York Times first reported the Trump campaign’s correspondence with X officials in an article on Musk “going all in” to elect Trump.

While Klippenstein’s post on X contained a link to his Substack page, itself containing a link to a PDF of the dossier, he did not directly share Vance’s information on the social media platform. X’s aggressive suppression of the dossier came in contrast to Meta’s more nuanced approach to the document, opting to block users from sharing Klippenstein’s newsletter but allowing Klippenstein’s Instagram and Facebook accounts to remain active.

“Our policies do not allow content from hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “We will be blocking such materials from being shared on our apps under our Community Standards.”

Klippenstein was hardly the only recipient of the dossier. In July, Politico flagged that its reporters had received emails from an individual offering a similar trove of private documents from inside the Trump campaign. Both the Times and The Washington Post likewise reported being contacted by an individual with campaign information, all three outlets ultimately opted against publishing the materials that were later reported to have been the result of a hack.

The move by X to block links to the newsletter comes after Musk selectively released Twitter company documents, which he dubbed the “Twitter Files,” claiming that the US government illegally coerced the social media company into censoring links to a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden. Company executives later said they regretted the decision and Twitter’s own lawyers later wrote that the government did not engage in coercion or censorship.

Musk has styled his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, which he later renamed X, as an attempt to foster a so-called free, digital public square and railed against “censorship.” But the ban on Klippenstein and suppression of all links to his newsletter in connection with the Trump campaign raises questions about the Musk-owned platform’s favoring of Trump.

As CNN has previously reported, Musk regularly uses his X pulpit to elevate the former president’s candidacy before his 201 million followers. Musk has also committed tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC he founded to reelect Trump.

Musk recently appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania and told conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson this week that he has been “trashing Kamala [Harris] nonstop,” and that if Trump loses the election, “I’m f–ked.”