On Wednesday, the Department of Justice released an indictment of two Russian state-controlled media employees on charges of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. This is less interesting than how they allegedly went about spreading pro-Russian propaganda: by funding some of your least favorite right-wing media dunderheads.
The Russia Today employees are accused of paying out nearly $10 million to Tennessee-based Tenet Media, "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues." If that description sounds like your bog-standard far-right influencers, you've got a good eye: Tenet employed folks like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern, a veritable C-list of conservative content creators.
Crucially and embarrassingly, the indictment, which you can read in full below, alleges the content creators were not aware of the true source of Tenet's funding, a thing I guess you could believe if you also believed these people were very dumb. So, it checks out. From the indictment:
KALASHNIKOV, AFANASYEVA, Founder-1, and Founder-2 worked together to mask U.S. Company-1's true source of funding—i.e., RT—by falsely portraying to Commentator-1 and Commentator-2 that U.S. Company-1 was sponsored by a private investor named "Eduard Grigoriann." In truth and in fact, Grigoriann was a fictional persona. For example, during contract negotiations, Commentator-1 requested that Founder-1 provide a profile or article on "Eduard Grigoriann." In response, Founder-1 sent Commentator-1 a one-page profile, provided to Founder-1 by another fictional persona purporting to represent "Eduard Grigoriann," falsely describing "Eduard Grigoriann" as an "accomplished finance professional" who had held various positions in Brussels and France at a multinational bank ("Bank-1"), including "Director of Private Banking [D]ivision and Wealth Management." After receiving the fictitious profile, Commentator-1 agreed to work with U.S. Company-1 and produced approximately 130 videos that were published on U.S. Company-1's platform.
Tenet's two founders, Lauren Chen—who has done work for Blaze Media and Turning Point USA; that grubby corner of the media is an incestuous one—and Liam Donovan, are not accused of a crime in the indictment, but were allegedly well aware of where this money is coming from. They were also not very subtle about the content.
On or about February 15, 2024, AFANASYEVA (as "Helena Shudra") shared with U.S. Company-1 a video of a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia. AFANASYEV A posted the video in the Producer Discord Channel. Later that day, Producer-1 privately messaged Founder-2 on Discord: "They want me to post this" - referencing the video that AFANASYEVA had posted - but "it just feels like overt shilling." Founder-2 replied that Founder-1 "thinks we should put it out there." Producer-I acquiesced, responding, "alright I'll put it out tomorrow."
The video was Tucker Carlson fawning over shopping at a Moscow grocery store. In another instance, after the March 22 terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 140 people and which ISIS publicly claimed credit for, the RT employees are alleged to have urged Tenet to blame Ukraine for the attack and for harboring ISIS members. "Happy to cover it," one of the commentators said, according to the indictment.
It is telling, and very funny, that this type of media figure who prides themselves on being "free thinkers" and calling everyone else NPCs are being accused of so easily falling for propaganda and pushing it uncritically on their audience. If the allegations in the indictment are true, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson et al. were simply not smart enough to realize they were dupes—useful idiots, with the emphasis decidedly not on the "useful."
And what exactly were they alleged to be getting in return for being baby-brained mouthpieces? Here's one example:
Commentator-1's contract, which was between Commentator-1's production company and U.S. Company-1, provided for "four weekly videos" to be hosted by Commentator-1 and livestreamed by U.S. Company-1. In exchange for a monthly fee of $400,000, plus a $100,000 signing bonus and an additional performance bonus,
Wait. $400,000 a month? Four hundred thousand American dollars for making a few videos? That very few people watched? And this is a normal-enough payout in the right-wing mediasphere that none of them questioned where it came from?
Hold on, I need to think about some stuff. I'll be back in a sec.
Я всегда восхищался великой нацией России и хотел бы посетить прекрасные мосты Санкт-Петербурга. Николай Гоголь — один из моих любимых писателей. Реалистические шедевры Ильи Репина намного лучше, чем декадентские западные импрессионисты. Рубль очень крепок, как русское спиртное. ЦСКА Москва может легко победить Нью-Йорк Рейнджерс. Мне больше не нужно просить вас подписываться на Defector, потому что у нас внезапно появился новый источник финансирования, о котором я не хочу вам рассказывать.
Этот блог закрыт!
