Read about Ken Klippenstein net worth, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, salary as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist working at The Intercept. Prior to joining The Intercept, Klippenstein was the D.C. Correspondent at The Nation and previously a senior investigative reporter for the online news program The Young Turks. His work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Salon, and other publications. His reporting focuses on U.S. federal and national security matters as well as corporate controversies.
Early life
Kenneth Jacob Klippenstein was born on February 1, 1988 (age 35) in the United States. He is the son of Stephen J. Klippenstein, a theoretical chemist for the Department of Energy at the Argonne National Laboratory. Klippenstein graduated from Wheaton College in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.
Career
Ken Klippenstein’s early journalism career began in Madison, Wisconsin. His work with The Young Turks started as early as 2018. In 2020, Klippenstein joined The Nation as their D.C. correspondent. He is a self-described “FOIA nerd”; much of his journalism draws on information he has uncovered from records requested at state and national levels of the US government.
Ken Klippenstein’s articles also frequently include information from leaked documents. He obtained leaked documents from the PR firm Qorvis, which implicated the company in pitching the private company Caliburn on a propaganda video in order to improve the reputation of Caliburn’s Homestead, a Florida shelter for “unaccompanied alien children”.
In an April 2020 article, Klippenstein reported on a leaked document showing that the Pentagon had warned the White House in 2017 about the risk of shortages and ill-preparation for a pandemic brought on by a novel coronavirus such as SARS-CoV-2. Klippenstein, along with Talia Lavin and Noelle Llamas, successfully sued the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In December 2020, he filed two new FOIA lawsuits: one against the U.S. Department of Justice and the other against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, U.S. Department of Energy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
During the George Floyd protests, Klippenstein’s reporting uncovered documents regarding federal policing of the protests. Specifically, Klippenstein obtained an FBI document that stated the Washington Field Office “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” during DC-area protests in contradiction to Attorney General William Barr and other officials’ assertions that Antifa were specifically responsible for instigating violence.
He also reported that contacts working at the Department of Homeland Security were disgruntled about orders to generate internal intelligence reports on journalists covering protests in Portland, Oregon as well as participating activists. Later, he co-authored with Lee Fang an article published by The Intercept in October 2022 regarding leaked documents exposing Department of Homeland Security’s plans to secretly police disinformation online.
Ken Klippenstein was interviewed on Useful Idiots, where he expressed concern about what he saw as a major media failure regarding intelligence information oversight in a situation with no one in control as things drift toward disaster.
On August 9, 2023, Klippenstein authored an article published on The Intercept regarding information Klippenstein obtained via FOIA requests about “the star witness of Congress’s UFO hearings, David Grusch,” and Grusch’s history relating to PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, and alcohol use.
On August 10, 2023, during an interview with Breaking Points, Klippenstein stated that he spoke with both “DoD people and intelligence people” while working on his article; Klippenstein described his sources as “mid-level people,” who are “experienced, but didn’t quite have the political chops generally to quite make it to the top.”
According to The Daily Beast, Klippenstein “has a history of pranking unknowing targets on Twitter.” Klippenstein has occasionally been the subject of reporting, as well, due to him pranking individuals from across the political spectrum.
Following a Twitter flame war with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, he attracted Musk’s attention by sharing a Vogue photograph from the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscars afterparty showing Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell, a long-time associate of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had been convicted of sex trafficking. Musk, who as of June 3, 2020, had 35.5 million Twitter followers, publicly posted that Klippenstein was a “douche-about-town.”
On January 9, 2024, he and other journalists wereabruptly banned from X, the platform formally known as Twitter and which Musk now owns. No explanation was given. In July 2019, Klippenstein was covered in the media after a Twitter incident in which he was retweeted by Iowa Congressman Steve King just before changing his Twitter display name to “Steve King is a white supremacist”.
In March 2021, Klippenstein pranked author Naomi Wolf by recommending she tweet an image of a fabricated anti-vaxxer quotation paired with a picture of American pornography actor Johnny Sins. On Memorial Day 2021, Klippenstein tricked political commentators Dinesh D’Souza and Matt Schlapp, as well as Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, into retweeting a photograph of John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, whom Klippenstein claimed was his veteran grandfather. After being retweeted by Gaetz, Klippenstein changed his display name on Twitter to be “matt gaetz is a pedo”. Gaetz later deleted his retweet.
Wife
Ken Klippenstein is currently single and not married as of January 2024. He has no children.
Ken Klippenstein net worth
How much is Ken Klippenstein worth? Ken Klippenstein net worth is estimated at around $3 million. His main source of income is from his primary work as a journalist. Klippenstein’s salary per month and other career earnings are over $352,000 dollars annually. His remarkable achievements have earned him some luxurious lifestyles and some fancy car trips. He is one of the richest and most influential journalists in the United States. He stands at an appealing height of 1.78m and has a good body weight which suits his personality.