Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- October 11, 2024
- Targets
- Ken Klippenstein (Independent)
FBI Director Christopher Wray at an Election Threats Task Force meeting in September 2024. An agent from the bureau went to journalist Ken Klippenstein’s Wisconsin home Oct. 11 to tell him he had been the target of a foreign influence operation.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein was visited at his Madison, Wisconsin, home by an FBI special agent on Oct. 11, 2024, in connection with his publication of a dossier about Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.
Klippenstein, who said the bureau visit could be interpreted as an effort to chill his reporting, published the dossier Sept. 26, writing that the vetting document was reportedly hacked from the Trump campaign by the Iranian government and that other journalists had declined to publish it.
Two weeks later, Klippenstein told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, an FBI agent from a satellite office in nearby Middleton came to his home to read him a one-paragraph statement notifying him that he “was a target of a foreign influence campaign.”
“When he finished reading it, I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, I know. I put that in the story. I tried to inform readers that this is very likely an Iranian cyberactor trying to propagate these hacked documents. So, given that I wrote that in the article and I know all this, why did you come out here to notify me?’” Klippenstein recounted. “And he didn’t have an answer to that question, he just kind of shrugged.”
The agent wouldn’t allow him to take a picture of the statement or write notes, Klippenstein recounted, but said he’d try to have a copy emailed to the journalist. Klippenstein told the Tracker he never received such an email, and the FBI didn’t respond to his request for comment about the procedure behind such notifications.
“He said to me, ‘You’re not in trouble.’ And then I’m thinking, ‘OK. Well, why then? What is the point of this? I know I didn’t break any laws here,” he said. “The FBI has a notification system for foreign influence stuff, but I don’t think there’s any public evidence that that had happened to press before.”
In an article Klippenstein published on his Substack page, he said the purpose of the visit was clear.
“America’s most powerful law enforcement agency wants me to know it was displeased,” he wrote. “It is delivering what many would consider a chilling message: we know where you live, we know what you’ve done, we are watching,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment when reached by the Tracker.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
