Elon Musk’s X worked with Donald Trump’s campaign to downplay hacked materials, report says

Elon Musk’s social media platform worked with former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to take down links to hacked documents, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Times, citing two people with knowledge of the events, said the Trump campaign worked with X to remove links to a leaked dossier that included the personal details of Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.

The dossier was made public by journalist Ken Klippenstein, who included a copy of the document in his Substack article discussing its contents. Subsequently, X suspended Klippenstein’s account and blocked links to the material.

The Trump campaign created the 271-page document in the process of vetting Vance as a potential running mate, but hackers leaked it to the press. Until Klippenstein’s article, major media outlets like the Times and The Washington Post had declined to publish or cover the material, Vanity Fair reported.

“Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number,” X said in a statement last month. In his own statement, Musk called Klippenstein’s report “one of the most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen.”

But X’s quick response was quickly slammed as “hypocritical” by experts, several of whom pointed to Musk’s own condemnation of X (then known as Twitter) and its 2020 decision to block links to the New York Post’s reporting on the laptop belonging to then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son. Twitter, which later reversed its decision, had cited concerns it was based on hacked materials.

Musk has been critical of Twitter’s decision, questioning whether employees who suppressed the story should be given time in jail and calling it “free speech surpession. After he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk gave a series of handpicked journalists access to internal documents to write stories, which were later published and promoted as the Twitter Files. Some of those files also contained the personal information of public officials, the Washington Post reported.

Musk’s relationship with Trump has grown over the past year, a shift from their prior feuds. The Tesla CEO has endorsed Trump, openly discussed a potential role in a Trump White House, and recently appeared alongside the former president at a rally.

He’s also launched America PAC, a super political action committee that is spending a sizable chunk of change to help Trump on the national stage and Republicans in tight congressional races. Exactly how much money Musk has personally contributed to the group is unknown, although he initially discussed a budget between $140 million and $180 million, the Times reports. America PAC will file its third-quarter report later this month.