Right-wingers have taken to sending death threats to Andrew Kaczynski, the CNN reporter who wrote and published a piece claiming to know the identity of the Reddit troll who created he "Trump-CNN-smackdown" GIF.
According to The Daily Beast, Kaczynski, who heads up the network's "K-File" investigative program, his wife and his parents have all received threats from an amalgamation of far-right trolls intent on "doxxing" him due to what appears to be a threat to do the same to Reddit user HanAssholeSolo, the creator of the GIF.
According to the Beast, Kaczynski's family are the recipients of at least 50 threatening or harassing phone calls, and other members of the K-File team also received harassing messages after the information began cropping up on 4chan's politics board (the initial site of the calls to dox K-File).
“The only thing I worry about is somebody getting hurt,” an anonymous source told the Beast. “These far-right trolls are really threatening people and coming after people. Somebody’s gonna do something stupid at some point.
Despite reassurances that the network has no intention to reveal HanAssholeSolo's name or identity, the trolls (which are made up of members of 4-chan, the white supremacist Daily Stormer's "troll army" and other groups) are "preemptively doxxing" K-File as punishment for a controversial statement at the end of the Kaczynski's initial piece that some believed was a form a blackmail.
The beginning of the K-File doxxing campaign came when a popular alt-right Twitter claimed HanAssholeSolo was a queer 15-year-old supporter of President Donald Trump, though CNN denies the claim and says he's actually an adult man.
Report typos and corrections to corrections@rawstory.com.
For customer support contact support@rawstory.com.
