Author Violates X Rules for Doxxing Delta Force Commander Who ‘Kidnapped’ Venezuela’s ‘Rightful President’

(Photo Credit: Rolling Stone)

Best-selling author and investigative reporter Seth Harp had a post blocked on X after he doxxed a Delta Force commander he claimed “kidnapped the rightful president” of Venezuela, strongman Nicolás Maduro. 

His post on Sunday was met with swift pushback from many irate users who said he was putting a target on the back of the military member.

Harp posted the following:

This is the current commander of Delta Force, whose men just invaded as sovereign country, killed a bunch of innocent people, and kidnapped the rightful president.

(BTW it’s perfectly legal for a U.S. reporter to disclose classified material the leakage of which I did not procure)

He included a screenshot that contained personal information about the commander.

Harp — after many users were already upset over his post — “protected” his posts, which only allowed followers to read them.

X then made the post unavailable a few hours later; “This Post violated the X Rules” the brief X message said when users tried to pull up Harp’s post. Harp then deleted the post by Monday morning.

In a statement to Mediaite, Harp said the following:

“In no way did I ‘doxx’ the colonel in question. I did not post any nonpublic personally identifying information about him, such as his birthday, social security number, home address, phone number, email address, the names of his family members, or pictures of his house. I posted a screenshot of his publicly available, online biography, which clearly identifies him, for all the world to see, as an active-duty US Army Special Operations officer. He is a high-ranking official of the American military and his involvement in the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, is the legitimate subject of journalistic scrutiny.”

Harp is the author of The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces. That book is being turned into a TV show by HBO; Harp lists “executive producer” for HBO among his jobs on LinkedIn.

Beyond his books and a contributing editor gig at Rolling Stone, Harp has racked up bylines for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Intercept, and Columbia Journalism Review. His biography on the Penguin Random House website said Harp “served in the United States Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Iraq.”

His doxxing of the commander came a day after President Donald Trump’s administration launched a military strike in Venezuela and captured Maduro and his wife.

Maduro was charged in federal court in New York with narco-terrorism conspiracy, weapons charges, and cocaine-importation conspiracy. Maduro and three other defendants trafficked “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” according to the indictment.

A number of X users tagged Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to try to alert him to Harp’s doxxing post. Many users tagged HBO, and others simply ripped Harp for the post.

Editor’s Note: This article originally said Harp was the author of three books, not one. 

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