(José Niño, Headline USA) A Virginia federal judge has denied a motion to force a journalist to disclose his tax info and a trove of information related to all the electronic devices he’s used over the last five years.
The sweeping request came from Yaacov Apelbaum, a former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer and cybersecurity executive who founded the firm XRVision. Apelbaum sued independent journalist Jordan Arthur Bloom for characterizing him as “an Israeli spy” in a January 2024 Substack article about his role in analyzing Hunter Biden’s laptop data before the 2020 election.
Apelbaum said Bloom maliciously wrote the article to harm him and his company, while Bloom has defended his reporting on the grounds that it’s true, and that it highlights Israel’s involvement in the conservative movement.
As part of the lawsuit, Apelbaum asked a judge last month to compel Bloom to “produce all documents and communications related to any computer or electronic device [Bloom] owned at any point in the past 5 years.” Apelbaum also sought all of Bloom’s tax returns for each of the past seven years.
On Friday, US Magistrate Judge William Porter denied Apelbaum’s demands on the grounds that they were served on Bloom too soon before the end of discovery.
However, Judge Porter granted one of the other contentious elements of Apelbaum’s motion: to compel Bloom to identify a source who told him that Apelbaum served in Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite reconnaissance unit often compared to Delta Force. The judge ordered Bloom to disclose his source even though that information didn’t appear in his article (it came up during a deposition, and Apelbaum later clarified that he, in fact, served in the IDF’s 35th Paratroopers Brigade).
Bloom has characterized these requests as fishing expeditions designed to burden and intimidate rather than to gather evidence relevant to the defamation claims. However, he said that he will comply with the judge’s order to disclose his source, because the source wasn’t speaking under anonymity and because he won’t suffer any harm as a result of the disclosure.
Bloom has also characterized Apelbaum’s demand as a “two-faced farce”: while Apelbaum uses federal litigation to compel source identification from an independent journalist, he simultaneously serves as a research provider to Laura Loomer, a Zionist activist who gained Pentagon press credentials in November 2025.
According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, Apelbaum has worked closely with Loomer, providing research for her attacks on national security officials she labels “Muslim sympathizers.” Loomer gained access to the Pentagon press room after dozens of mainstream journalists walked out rather than sign Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s restrictive coverage rules.
The case, Apelbaum et al v. Bloom, can be found here.
Ken Silva contributed to this report.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
