Andrew Kaczynski (born November 30, 1989)[2] is an American journalist and a political reporter for
CNN.[3] He became well known in 2011 by posting old video clips of politicians, often of them making statements contrary to their current political positions, to
YouTube.[4] He was described as "the
[2012] Republican primaries' most influential amateur opposition researcher".
He was hired by BuzzFeed in 2012. He has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN.[5] On October 3, 2016, Kaczynski announced he was leaving
BuzzFeed and joining CNN.[6]
Early life
Kaczynski grew up in the suburbs of
Cleveland.[7] His father Stephen served in the Army[8] and was a lawyer at the firm
Jones Day and his mother Theresa was a stay-at-home mother. His parents were raised in New York City and both his grandparents served in the city's police and fire departments.[9][7] He is of Polish and
Arbëreshë (or Italo-Albanian) heritage.[10][11]
Kaczynski attended
Benedictine High School in Cleveland.[12] Following high school, he attended college at
Ohio University for two years,[7] but got involved with political reporting, and then transferred to
St. Johns University[13] to study early American history. He enrolled in online courses to meet his degree requirement, but did not graduate.[14][15][16]
Kaczynski got his start by e-mailing reporters' tip boxes with clips he found of politicians contradicting themselves.[19][20]
Career
Work at Buzzfeed
Kaczynski began working for Buzzfeed at the start of 2012 while he was still studying at St. Johns University.[21][7] In March 2012, Kaczynski uncovered numerous clips of
Mitt Romney supporting an individual mandate, contradicting his then-current campaign position. He also uncovered a clip of
Barack Obama protesting at Harvard while at law school over a lack of faculty diversity.[22]
In November 2013, Kaczynski reported that Kentucky Senator
Rand Paul had plagiarized sections of a speech he gave in June 2013 on immigration from the Wikipedia article of the movie Stand and Deliver. Kaczynski subsequently reported Paul's 2012 book Government Bullies also contained passages that were plagiarized from articles from
The Heritage Foundation and from the
Cato Institute.[23] Further reports by Kaczynski revealed another four instances of plagiarism from an article by
Case Western Reserve University professor
Jonathan H. Adler and
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur. Another section of the book was discovered to be plagiarized from an article written in Forbes Magazine.[citation needed] The next year, Kaczynski continued with a series of articles chronicling politicians' plagiarism. Kaczynski found more than a dozen examples of politicians running for office in 2014 copying their plans and issues pages verbatim from other candidates.[24] In January 2017, Kaczynski reported that
Monica Crowley had plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book What The (Bleep) Just Happened.[25] The publisher,
HarperCollins, announced they would stop selling the book.[25] The Trump Administration tapped Crowley to serve as senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.[25] In May 2017, he reported that Sheriff
David Clarke had plagiarized portions of his master's thesis.[26]
Following the
Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, he played a role in spreading unsubstantiated misinformation about the identities of the suspected bombers when he retweeted false reports made by
Reddit user Greg Hughes.[27][28]
In 2015,
Politico reported Kaczynski was leading internal opposition research at BuzzFeed looking to dig up dirt on politicians.[29]NPR reported Kaczynski's team dug up clips of Donald Trump saying he supported – despite statements to the contrary – the Iraq War; a clip of Hillary Clinton referring to some children as "super predators"; a video of Ben Carson saying he believed the pyramids were used to store grain; and a video of Bernie Sanders proclaiming his support for
Fidel Castro and the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua.[30] Kaczynski subsequently found clips of Donald Trump supporting the 2011 American intervention in Libya,[31] the toppling of Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak,[32] and pushing for U.S. action to protect Iranian protesters.[33] Clips Kaczynski found of Donald Trump on the
Howard Stern Show[34] were used in both Democratic[35] and Republican[36] attack ads against Trump and as the basis of a question in the
first general election Presidential debate of 2016. During the U.S. campaign for president in 2016, Kaczynski brought to attention a statement by the chairman of the
American Nazi Party in support of Republican candidate
Donald Trump on the grounds that "if Trump does win ... it's going to be a real opportunity for people like white nationalists."[37]
Work at CNN
On October 3, 2016, Kaczynski and his team announced they were leaving
BuzzFeed and joining CNN.[6]
In January 2017, Kaczynski surfaced audio of Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of labor,
Andrew Puzder, describing the employees hired at his restaurants as the "best of the worst".[38] Puzder later withdrew due to other reasons, and did not join the administration.[39]
On July 4, 2017, Kaczynski
controversially reported he used "identifying information" to find the identity of a
Reddit user who created an anti-CNN video meme President
Donald Trumptweeted two days prior, using a
Facebook search to find them. The Reddit user had a history of racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic postings.[40] Kaczynski reported the creator's identity would be withheld by CNN, since the creator was a private citizen, and because he had issued an "extensive apology". CNN executive editor of standards, Rick Davis,[41] then added the disclaimer "CNN reserves the right to publish his identity, should any of that change".[42][43] The disclaimer was subject to criticism that it created the appearance of blackmail, while, conversely, the article was also criticized for not revealing the subject's name.[44] Kaczynski stated that the line was "misinterpreted", and that the user said that he was not threatened prior to his apology.[45][46][47]
In 2017 and 2018, a number of Trump administration officials such as
Carl Higbie, Jamie Johnson, Todd Johnson, Christine Bauserman, and Brute Bradford resigned over controversial comments Kaczynski uncovered.[48][49][50][51][52]
In March 2019, Kaczynski reported on a 1993 Senate speech in which Joe Biden referred to "predators on our streets" and proposed that new legislation was required to utilize prisons to remove them from society.[53]
Recognition
Time named Kaczynski's Twitter feed one of "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013", one of ten in the Politics category.[54]Slate political reporter
Dave Weigel called him "the
Oppenheimer of archival video research".[21]
Politico named him one of the breakout stars of the 2016 election.[57] In 2017, he was nominated for the
Shorty Award for Best Journalist.[58] In 2018, Kaczynski was named to
Forbes' 30 Under 30 Media list.[59]
On December 25, 2020, Kaczynski announced the death of his nine month old daughter Francesca. She died the day prior after a battle with an
atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor in her brain. In the year following her death, Kaczynski started the Team Beans Infant Brain Tumor Fund at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and raised more than $1,700,000 for infant brain tumor research. In April 2021, he raised more than $240,000 by running the Boston Marathon.[61][62][63][64][60][65][66]
Kaczynski and Ensign's second daughter, Talia Davida, was born on January 27, 2022.[1]
He was described as a moderate
Republican in a New York magazine profile. It was later revealed Kaczynski was misquoted, and called himself "a political moderate".[4][67]
^"Ora Et Labora"(PDF). Ora et Labora (Spring 2018). Cleveland Benedictine High School: 21. Archived from
the original(PDF) on January 1, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
^"Twitter". mobile.twitter.com.
Archived from the original on November 24, 2022. Retrieved May 22, 2017.