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ken klippenstein
Underreported Memo Is 'Declaration of War' Against Trump Opponents
"By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime," one news organization said.
Sep 28, 2025
In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.
Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence," focuses exclusively on "anti-fascist" or left-wing activities, and mandates a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts."
"I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda," journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.
Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.
"In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report," Klippenstein wrote.
For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and "entities" and listing several protected beliefs as "indicia" of extremism.
These include:
- "Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;
- Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
- Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."
What's more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI's over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.
"For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level," Klippenstein wrote.
The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining "organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder" as "domestic terrorist acts."
The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to "take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism," which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.
Finally, as Drop Site News pointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.
"By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime," Drop Site wrote.
The Trump administration's focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardian reported earlier this month.
The administration's efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:
A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.
However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.
"Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover 'radicalism,'" Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.
"We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government," he wrote on social media on Friday. "The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized."
In an interview with Greg Sargent for the New Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as "goading" on violence against the agency.
Referring to Miller's comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.”
The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.
"Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity," Sargent wrote. "That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them."
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Leaked Chats Show Alleged Kirk Killer 'Doesn't Fit Into Any Tidy Narrative'
"He wasn't a Groyper. He also wasn't Antifa," said journalist Ken Klippenstein, who obtained Tyler Robinson's Discord messages and spoke with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old suspect.
Sep 16, 2025
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday challenged conflicting narratives circulating about Tyler Robinson by obtaining online chats and speaking with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
Republican US President Donald Trump "and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing," Klippenstein wrote. "The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called nihilist violent extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war."
While Kirk's fatal shooting last week during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University has been widely condemned as political violence, the unnamed childhood friend told Klippenstein: “I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part... That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics, which is why it's so frustrating.”
“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the friend said, describing Robinson as a fan of the outdoors, video games—including Helldivers 2, the apparent source of some inscriptions on bullet casings found by authorities—and guns.
“Obviously he's okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” according to the friend, who said that Robinson is bisexual and his family didn't know he was in a relationship with his transgender roommate.
Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Dan Bongino have publicly identified his roommate and romantic partner as Lance Twiggs—and said that Twiggs is cooperating with authorities and did not know of Robinson's alleged plan to kill Kirk.
Robinson—who ultimately ended authorities' manhunt for the shooter by turning himself in—appeared virtually for his first court hearing on Tuesday. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
As Newsweek reported Tuesday, prosecutors have allegedly obtained text messages in which Robinson admits to Twiggs that he killed Kirk and discusses having to leave behind a rifle, later retrieved by authorities. Robinson reportedly told his parents that he targeted the Turning Point USA leader because "there is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate."
In the wake of Kirk's death, many of his critics have also acknowledged his incendiary commentary on a range of topics. Right-wing figures and officials, including key members of President Donald Trump's administration, have responded by launching what Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.”
As Klippenstein wrote:
The federal government, the Washington crowd, and corporate media (based in Washington and New York) see the country in wholly partisan terms, Republican versus Democrat, Red versus Blue, old media versus social media, liberal versus conservative, right versus left, straight versus gay, and on and on. Charlie Kirk’s assassination (in Utah!) should remind us of the actual diversity of the nation, and of the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.
No one in Robinson’s group is cheering or justifying the murder in any of the messages I reviewed. They’re just struggling to understand what their friend did. But Washington has become obsessed with the Discord chat, convinced it’s some kind of headquarters for the murder and cauldron of radicalization and conspiracy. Today FBI Director [Kash] Patel vowed to investigate “anyone and everyone in that Discord chat.”
What I see is a bunch of young people shocked, horrified, and searching for answers, like the rest of the country.
At least one person on Capitol Hill quickly took note of the reporting. Sharing it on the social media platform X, Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said: "This is very interesting. The more that comes out the more this doesn't fit into any tidy narrative other than a young man who made a bad choice with a gun."
Other journalists praised Klippenstein on X, saying: "Hey look it's real journalism," and "At the moment Ken Klippenstein has done the best reporting I've seen anywhere on Tyler Robinson."
Journalist Roger Sollenberger wrote: "This is the most valuable and insightful reporting yet on Tyler Robinson—citing current actual friends and messages from a Discord group he was in. And it underscores how stupid and irresponsible the rush has been to assign him to a political aisle."
Appearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Patel said the FBI is interviewing more than 20 people who were part of a Discord group with Robinson.
Responding on X, Klippenstein said: "The members of Tyler Robinson's Discord are just as shocked and traumatized by what happened as anyone. That the FBI is treating them like conspirators is so cruel it's stomach-turning."
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Trump Adviser Says Those Who Oppose Abrego Garcia Detention May Be 'Aiding and Abetting' Terrorism
"Americans are increasingly coming into the crosshairs" as the Trump administration wages attacks on dissenters, said journalist Ken Kippenstein.
Apr 17, 2025
Rights advocates who have expressed outrage in recent weeks over the Trump administration's expulsion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and other migrants have based their criticism on core tenets of the U.S. Constitution—particularly the right to due process—but President Donald Trump's top counterterrorism adviser on Tuesday night suggested that defenders of basic constitutional rights are actually "aiding and abetting" terrorists.
As independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported, White House Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka said in an interview with Newsmax that the divide between the Trump administration, which has sent hundreds of people to a notorious foreign prison without trial and disobeyed a Supreme Court order, and those who oppose its actions boils down to a disagreement between those who "love America" and those who "hate America."
Those committed to abandoning constitutional rights guaranteed to anyone on U.S. soil, according to Gorka, are in the former camp.
"We have people who love America, like the president, like his Cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans," said Gorka. "And then there is the other side, that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists."
"And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?" Gorka said. "Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute."
White House 'counterterrorism czar' Sebastian Gorka says Americans who criticize deportations like that of Abrego Garcia are 'aiding and abetting terrorists' — a criminal offense. pic.twitter.com/ZdjahFyvmG
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) April 17, 2025
In his newsletter, Klippenstein analyzed whether "Gorka's intensely partisan worldview be turned into government practice," noting that his comments came the day before Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) traveled to El Salvador to speak to top government officials about releasing Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who has been repeatedly accused by the Trump administration of being a "convicted" member of the gang MS-13 despite having no criminal record.
"The Trump administration has already taken the unprecedented step of formally designating a variety of 'transnational criminal organizations,' gangs and drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations," said Klippenstein. "With that in place, all the administration would have to do to turn Gorka's rhetoric into reality would be to claim that critics of Trump's immigration and deportation policies are providing them with 'material support.'"
Gorka suggested that actions such as Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador, during which he tried but was unable to make contact with Abrego Garcia, who is being detained at President Nayib Bukele's Terrorism Confinement Center, could eventually be the basis of felony charges against the senator.
The counterterrorism czar lambasted Democrats for expressing concern about "the rights of this individual," referring to Abrego Garcia.
"You mean the terrorist who came here illegally?" he said, echoing Bukele's baseless suggestion in the Oval Office of the White House earlier this week that the Maryland resident has been proven to be a terrorist.
Klippenstein warned that while Gorka's statements appeared to display a "wingnut" legal theory, the counterterrorism adviser is "much more powerful than he was in Trump's first term," when he was briefly a deputy assistant to the president and was largely dismissed as a fringe figure in Trump's orbit.
Gorka is now leading Trump's counterterrorism strategy, including the government's shift in focus toward anti-Trump protests like those that have taken place at Tesla dealerships.
"So-called Tesla terrorism and potential anti-Trump violence is driving new articulations of the threat," a senior intelligence official told Klippenstein.
Klippenstein wrote on Wednesday that Gorka's comments reveal the Trump administration's plan to cast "a wider and wider net in its new domestic war on terrorism," potentially targeting anyone who opposes Trump's flouting of court orders and his anti-immigration operation.
"While the media's focus is understandably on migrants and deportees," said Klippenstein, "Americans are increasingly coming into the crosshairs."
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