You may have seen the name Jackie Singh popping up on X over the last few days. But if you're not a member of the military or veteran community, you may not have paid attention to the details and simply scrolled by.
For those not in the know, Singh is known for her extreme left-wing independent journalism. As a brash and outspoken purveyor of progressive ideology, she has a background that many on the left do not — she served in the U.S. Army in an active combat zone. And she uses that detail to bludgeon any and all criticism of the policies she advocates.
Except it was recently discovered that her own description of her background might not be based in reality.
On October 17, before the University of Texas at San Antonio and U.S. Naval Academy football game, members of our armed forces put on a display of capabilities by rappelling from the rafters of the Alamodome. The same kind of display that has taken place at countless events over the years, and is used as a valuable training opportunity for our service members.
Unfortunately, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Ian Patterson lost his life during the exercise, with the cause of the incident remaining under investigation. While this was a devastating loss to his family, the Air Force, and every American, our brave service members know it comes with the territory. All reasonable measures are taken to prevent the loss of life, but the reality is that when you’re doing a dangerous job, people will die. Even in training. And while it rarely makes the national news, this kind of thing happens on military bases all around the world every year.
Predictably, Singh used this tragedy in an attempt to score cheap political points, and her rabid left-wing followers ate it up like fresh red meat. She was especially vocal in her attacks on the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, blaming him personally for the death.
He died. Thanks @PeteHegseth @SecWar for yet another pointless and tragic recruiting spectacle
— Jackie Singh 🇺🇸 🗳️ IWillVote.com (@HackingButLegal) October 18, 2026
Backlash was swift and intense, with hundreds of people calling her out for her ghoulish behavior. Her response to many was some variation of “F*ck you, I’m a veteran.”
Debate raged on in the replies until U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jeremy Knauff scrolled across the tweet. Appalled at what he saw, he began digging into Singh’s background, and once he got a hold of her service records, he concluded that her stories of combat service were greatly exaggerated. The more he dug, the worse it got.
“She did serve and was briefly in Iraq, that much is true,” he explains, adding:
“But she was never in a combat role as she claimed. Worse yet, she faced extensive disciplinary action for an ongoing pattern of misconduct that was so bad she was sent back to the U.S. after just a few months and discharged from the military entirely. I don’t think the average civilian understands just how badly you have to screw up to get sent home early from a combat deployment.”
Knauff says he never had an opportunity to deploy to Iraq because he got out roughly a year before the Global War on Terrorism, known as the GWOT, began. His last deployment included a stint in Bosnia with the 26th MEU in 1998.
“I absolutely loathe people like Jackie who engage in stolen valor, especially when they’re doing it for profit, because I lost brothers doing the things these frauds pretend they did. It’s a disgrace,” he explains.
Brothers like Sergeant Todd Grant, who Knauff describes as “one of the best leaders I had the pleasure of serving with.”
So he took action. It started with a tweet calling out Singh for using wildly embellished stories of her service to promote her role as an “investigative journalist,” but he also continued digging into her online activity and found even more disturbing behavior.
“She bragged about her ‘extensive combat experience’ and supposed ability to kill people, made countless disparaging comments about critics who hadn’t served, and even outright threatened violence.”
So he started capturing screenshots, and then published another tweet with more details of her service along with these screenshots, and tagged her.
JFC…I came across more of this con artist’s comments about her “service” and holy hell… Jackie Sing, aka @HackingButLegal calls herself a “decorated veteran” but conveniently left out that she was kicked out of the military early after less than 2 years for repeated misconduct. In 2024, says she was deployed to Iraq for *many* years, then in 2026 she claims she was deployed to Iraq for a year, but her DD214 shows her total time overseas was just 4 months. And her replies are filled with attacks on people, using her so called service as a weapon. I’ve got tons of screenshots that I’ve found and that people have shared with me. I lost brothers who died doing the things she pretends she did. There’s a special place in hell for shit bag barely veterans like her.
— Jeremy Knauff (@jeremyknauff) October 19, 2026
His tweets started getting lots of attention. Many retweeted them while others used the information to publish tweets of their own. Soon after that, other veterans who had served with Singh began sharing firsthand stories. By that evening, just a few hours later, the story had gone viral. Tens of thousands of tweets quickly filled the timeline and search results, which soon became hundreds of thousands of tweets.
Singh lashed out. First accusing Knauff of working for Hegseth and the Department of War, and later resorting to legal threats and even threats of violence in her replies.
In the wake of my viral tweet about the livestreamed death of Tech Sgt. Ian Patterson -- reported by Raw Story, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, and The Independent -- a public relations firm associated with the Department of War is now spreading false information about me using bots. https://t.co/hAK4ajNZYD
— Jackie Singh 🇺🇸 🗳️ IWillVote.com (@HackingButLegal) October 19, 2026
Knauff, a PR expert who works primarily with entrepreneurs, says he does not, nor has he ever worked for Hegseth or the Department of War, noting:
“Personally, I think Pete Hegseth is doing a great job and a vast majority of our service members feel the same way. Especially those in the combat arms, and that’s because of his absolute commitment to military lethality and our warfighters at the tip of the spear.”
It’s also worth noting that at the time of writing this article, USAA still had Singh listed on The National Military Monument, honoring her as a veteran. Knauff and others contacted USAA regarding this matter, but the company has not responded to their inquiries. That doesn’t seem to align with the behavior of a company that supposedly exists to serve veterans and active duty military.
While Singh’s behavior is the lowest of the low, it’s just a symptom of a much larger problem. She’s just one of countless left-wing “journalists” who chose to push a hyperpartisan agenda rather than report factual information. She operates within a circle of self-described journalists like Ed Krassenstein, Leah Pfeiffer, David Pakman, and Jennifer Welch, to name just a few, who serve as the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party solely to dishonestly present their fake talking points as objective facts. And many command virtual armies of rabid followers driven by confirmation bias, who will gleefully attack anyone who debates their coverage, like a mob of vicious flying monkeys.
Fortunately, in many cases, the impact of these “journalists” has waned in recent years, both because a majority of Americans can see through the deception and have grown tired of it, and because of what some suspect was the impact of USAID's dismantling on bot networks that may have been artificially propping them up.
Singh’s X profile raises similar questions. Despite having over 94K followers, you’ll find very little engagement. Likes, replies, and retweets can be counted in double digits at best — far lower than would be typical for an account of this size. You can also see it with the various gun control groups, which would routinely amass thousands of likes, replies, and retweets before USAID was shut down; today, they receive almost no support and their replies are filled with criticism.
While Jackie Singh is currently going viral for fraudulently misrepresenting her military service, the real story here is the massive network of self-proclaimed journalists pushing left-wing propaganda.
I believe, as patriotic Americans, we have a duty to push back against this machine. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking a role in journalism ourselves, though that is one viable path. It could be as simple as discussing the facts of the issues, both online and in person, with the people in our circles. As Cliff Maloney so often explains, we need to get organized and take action at the grassroots level to take our country back from the people who hate it.
Nate Jurewicz is a citizen journalist covering politics and real estate, both local to Florida and on a national level. He’s also a conservative political activist and aspiring politician.
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