Democratic influencers Ed and Brian Krassenstein have been exposed as owners of porn website domains, DailyMail.com has revealed.
The Krassenstein brothers rose to internet fame for their critical responses to Donald Trump’s Twitter account during his presidency. Their tweets, which promoted Democrats and criticized Republicans—particularly Trump—regularly garnered millions of views.
But the 42-year-old twins are now fighting an online battle for their own reputation after their arch-nemesis, right-wing science journalist Dr Simon Goddek, claimed the brothers previously owned domain names for a shocking collection of porn sites.
In a statement on social media, the brothers said they “never ran a porn site of any kind,” but admitted to buying website addresses in bulk.
Ed and Brian Krassenstein, 42, are now fighting an online battle for their own reputation after they were accused of buying up multiple internet domains for a shocking collection of porn sites
Right-wing science journalist Dr. Simon Goddek shared screenshots on X this week showing that Ed’s email address is linked to several porn site domains and one address called ’17onlygirls.com’
According to screenshots, Ed Krassenstein’s email address and username were linked to domains including ’17onlygirls.com’ Goddek posted on Xformerly known as Twitter.
Other sites with domains previously registered to his email address include Porn4.us, BigBoobFilm.com and homosexuals.co.in.
Screenshots of his messages from 2007 show that he negotiated the purchase of three addresses: TeenPies.com, TeenPie.com and TeenPorn101.com.
There is no evidence that the Krassensteins themselves ran porn sites. But by purchasing porn site domains, they were able to profit from the sale or rental of those addresses.
In a September 17, 2007 post, a user named “edbri871” (which matches Brian’s Pinterest username and the email address the Krassensteins used to register the porn site addresses) responded to a post offering to sell the addresses of the alleged teen porn sites.
“What price are you looking for these? Have you parked them and if so how much did they fetch?” wrote user edbri871.
‘Answer sent via [private message]’ replied the seller, 458domains.
In other posts on the same site, user edbri871 signed off with the name ‘Brian’.
Goddek posted screenshots of Ed Krassenstein’s post on the site Web Hosting Talk, where the left-wing influencer wrote that he was “looking for sites that are established and generate a regular monthly profit.” He added that he was “mostly interested in Forum and sites that are geared towards young adults/teens.”
Brian Krassenstein wrote on X on Wednesday that the request concerned fan club websites for musicians and entertainers.
He also responded to Goddek’s messages on Tuesdaysaying: ‘We have never hosted porn sites in our own country [sic] lives. What we did 18 years ago was buy and sell huge portfolios of domain names. We owned over 15,000 domain names, no websites, and brokered them.’
Goddek, who runs a science news site that describes itself as a site that combats pseudoscience, responded: “It’s in black and white: there are screenshots that show you guys bought teen porn domains (which you call portfolio, lol) with traffic.
Screenshots of messages from 2007 show Brian Krassenstein negotiating the purchase of three addresses: TeenPies.com, TeenPie.com and TeenPorn101.com
A posted screenshot showed a post from user ‘edbri871’ who was ‘looking for sites that are established and provide a regular monthly profit’, adding that he was ‘mostly interested in forums and sites that target young adults/teens’
The email address appeared as a ‘registrant’ for several porn website domains in a Google search
“The evidence is hitting you right in the face, but you keep saying it’s not true. Enough with the lies.”
In an extensive response to X, Brian Krassenstein wrote that “between 2001 and 2011 we operated a large domain name brokerage and parking business” with some 15,000 web addresses, and that “less than 0.2%” of those were “adult-oriented.”
“Most of these were taken down as soon as we were able to. None of them were EVER developed into websites or porn sites,” he wrote.
The Krassensteins have previously run into trouble because of their online activities.
Federal agents raided their homes in 2017 and seized nearly half a million dollars from the brothers, allegedly obtained through the sale of pyramid scheme advertisements on investment web forums they managed.
They denied any wrongdoing and managed to avoid arrest or criminal charges through a deal with the government in which they agreed to forfeit about $450,000 from the sale of a rental property.
Ed Krassenstein told DailyMail.com that he and his brother never purchased the domain names TeenPies.com, TeenPie.com or TeenPorn101.com.
He added that they may be considered registrants for certain domain names because they temporarily held them as intermediaries for other buyers and sellers, not because they owned the web addresses themselves.
Ed said he couldn’t remember whether he or his brother negotiated the web addresses of the “teen pies,” but he also suggested that some of the screenshots could have been fabricated.
The brothers, who grew up in New Jersey, have been entrepreneurs together since they were 15 years old, selling baseball cards online.
He added that they may be considered registrants for certain domain names because they temporarily held them as intermediaries for other buyers and sellers, not because they owned the web addresses themselves.
The Democratic influencers, who rose to fame for their critical responses to Donald Trump’s Twitter account during his presidency, have previously run into trouble for their online activities.
Ed said he couldn’t remember whether he or his brother negotiated the web addresses of the “teen pies,” but he also suggested that some of the screenshots could have been fabricated.
Ed also told DailyMail.com that 17onlygirls.com was ‘not a teen porn site’ and ‘a domain name that had nothing to do with porn at all’.
The address is currently no longer in use.
Other business ventures they had included a political news site called Hill Reporter, which they sold in 2019, and a website dedicated to 3D printing resources, which they sold in 2015.
They ran the investment forums TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup until the Department of Justice accused them of profiting from pyramid scheme activities through the sites.
Ed Krassenstein told the Daily Beast in 2018 that their forums were only intended to ‘help people figure out which online business opportunities were legitimate and which were not.’
At the height of their fame, when they fiercely railed against Donald Trump on Twitter in 2019, they were followed by US Congressmen Eric Swalwell, Ayanna Pressley, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, and by media personalities Van Jones and Megyn Kelly.
In May of that year, they were banned from Twitter for allegedly having fake accounts. However, after Elon Musk took over the company, their accounts were reinstated.
They clashed on social media with conservative, aspiring lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene and frequently interacted online with Democratic Squad member Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Ed has admitted that he started his account as a Justin Bieber fan page, which earned him thousands of followers, before renaming the page.
Currently, they have a combined 1,921,685 followers on X.