Allegations Against GOP Candidate Kimberly Klacik Are Unproven
The Claim
2020 Republican House of Representatives candidate for Maryland, Kimberly Klacik, used to work as a stripper and manager of a strip club. She also engaged in financial fraud and spent campaign finances on cocaine.
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Emerging story
In June, conservative social media personality Candace Owens did a live broadcast on Instagram in which she made a series of allegations against Kimberly Klacik, a Republican politician who ran for a House of Representatives seat in 2020. Owens claimed to have uncovered evidence of Klacik being a stripper, being the manager of a strip club, conducting financial fraud, and using campaign funds to buy cocaine which she then consumed in a strip club.
Owens stated that her evidence came from interviewing a stripper who had worked alongside Klacik, a number of irregular records on FEC.gov relating to the Klacik campaign, and photographs.
The video has since gone viral, gaining over 1.6 million views to date. This video also created social media activity. In August, Klacik announced that she was suing Owens for defamation, which brought renewed attention on social media to this story. Prior to the Owens broadcast, a number of social media users had claimed that Klacik was once a stripper.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation concludes that Owens’s evidence is not strong enough to prove that Klacik was a stripper, managed strippers, conducted financial fraud, or purchased cocaine. As high-quality news sources have highlighted, Owens herself has stated that she cannot confirm the allegations. Klacik also denied the allegations in an interview with Armstrong Williams.
Some sources have stated that Klacik has admitted to being a stripper, using the Williams interview as evidence. However, in the interview, she does not exactly confirm that she was a stripper. Williams, at the 4:30 minute mark of the interview, brings up the topic of Klacik potentially once being a stripper. He then states that everyone has a past and is imperfect. He ends this statement by saying, “You’re not the person who you were years ago. You’re the person who you are today.” Klacik then responds by saying that Williams is right. At no point does she say for certain that she was a stripper.
At the 33:00 minute mark of the Candace Owens Instagram stream, she states that photographs have confirmed that Klacik has partied at strip clubs. There are some images circulating online that appear to be Klacik within a strip club. But this is not proof that Klacik worked there. Additionally, business listings do state that someone named Jeff Klacik is the manager of a strip club in Baltimore. Klacik’s husband is named Jeff.
However, the other allegations in the video do not have proof. Owens lists Klacik’s campaign disbursements as evidence of financial fraud. The disbursements are genuine, and they do not point to illegality. Owens states that it is suspicious that Klacik spent money at a company named Fox and Lion LLC, which is run by Andy Pierre, a Democrat. In the Armstrong interview, Kacik states that she needed to hire a Democrat to understand how to message to the constituents in the district where she was running, which is heavily Democratic. Another irregularity that Owens lists is that Klacik paid $119,000 to a company named Pearl Events, which is registered as forfeited on the Maryland government website. However, it is currently listed as “revived” on this website, which works against Owens’s claim that this is evidence of campaign finance fraud, as the business is still active.
Owens claimed that she was told by a stripper who supposedly knew Klacik that Klacik used cocaine. We could find no evidence to support this claim.
Overall, of all of the allegations in Owens’ Instagram stream, the only claim that appears to be provable right now is that Klacik has visited a strip club. The rest of the claims are speculative.
