Washington DC - Journalist Ken Klippenstein has been sharing a private dossier regarding vice presidential candidate JD Vance that was obtained by Iranian hackers, and it has created quite a stir on social media.

Klippenstein, a former reporter for The Intercept, recently shared a download of the dossier to his personal Substack along with a blog post arguing that he decided to share the material because he believes it is "of keen public interest in an election season."

"It's a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate JD Vance," Klippenstein explained.

"As far as I can tell, it hasn't been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable," he added. "I'll let it speak for itself."

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He then shared a link to his article on X, and around three hours later, his account was suspended.

Other accounts with high amounts of followers who shared the link, such as journalist Justin Baragona, were also suspended, while smaller accounts that shared it had their posts deleted.

In a statement, the platform explained, "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."

TAG24 News has also confirmed that Facebook has been deleting posts sharing the link, explaining in a message to users that they either "misrepresented yourself or misused our platform to harm others."

The Vance dossier was allegedly part of a massive hack of presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign, which reportedly took place in August.

The hackers, who are believed to be based in Iran, attempted to share the Vance dossier with multiple news outlets.

All mainstream outlets refused to share it, however, on the grounds that nothing in it was newsworthy. There was also some hesitancy as to the motives of the hackers.

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The document consists of a collection of open-source materials and information the campaign gathered prior to Trump choosing Vance to be his running mate.

Most notably, it highlights what Klippenstein described as "insight into what the Trump campaign perceives to be Vance’s liabilities and weaknesses," which included a number of positions Vance held in the past that were in opposition to Trump.

Critics have been debating why social media platforms have been scrubbing the dossier, with many pointing out that Elon Musk, the owner of X, has a vested interest in suppressing the information. Musk has donated millions of dollars to Trump's campaign and is helping him run for re-election.

In response to his suspension, Klippenstein shared a follow-up post to his site, arguing that he does not regret sharing the unredacted material as all the "personal" information has already been "readily available" to the public.

"Not a single media organization was willing to publish a document that would have been a no-brainer during or prior to the heyday of Edward Snowden’s disclosures," Klippenstein wrote.

"That illustrates the dramatic shift in attitudes about what the news media thinks the public should know, and the role the mainstream plays in steadily ceding that territory to the national security threat machine."

"Media’s job, I believe, is to push back against these various forms of censorship," he added. "I'll keep doing that here on this newsletter, where you can find me going forward."