No, Seth Harp Didn’t Dox a Delta Force Commander
The journalist on a MAGA subpoena threat and the consequences of excessive military secrecy.
Last Wednesday, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Trump-supporting Instagram star turned lawmaker, introduced a motion in the House Oversight Committee to subpoena the journalist Seth Harp for allegedly “leaking classified information” and “doxing.” Harp’s crime? Tweeting the photo and public biography of an officer he identified as the commander of Delta Force, the elite Army unit that spearheaded the January 3 operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “The public identification of a covert or sensitive special operations servicemember, particularly one actively associated with a classified or partially classified military operation, creates foreseeable and substantial risks to operational security, the safety of US service members and their families, and the effectiveness of future intelligence and military operations,” Luna wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice she later posted on X.
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.