A «secret» Russian influence campaign allegedly paid $10 million to prop up a media company hosting what it saw as like-minded, right-wing commentators in the US — including popular pundits like Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin and Tim Pool.
A “secret” Russian influence campaign allegedly paid $10 million to prop up a media company hosting what it saw as like-minded, right-wing commentators in the US — including popular pundits like Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin and Tim Pool.
The Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian state-controlled media outlet RT on Wednesday for acting as unregistered foreign agents and laundering $9.7 million in payments to a Tennessee media company to allegedly promote pro-Kremlin propaganda.
The employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, are at large, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, after floating for almost a year the media entity that “posted nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone.”
Neither the company nor the content creators associated with it were named in the indictment, though other details point to it being the Nashville-based Tenet Media, whose founders allegedly “deceived” conservative influencers that may have included Johnson, Rubin and Pool.
The description of the company in the indictment matches Tenet’s own description on its website as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”
Tennessee Department of State records also confirm Tenet incorporated as a business on Jan. 19, 2022, the same date mentioned in the indictment.
Other business records and identifying characteristics in the unsealed indictment point to Lauren Chen — a former RT commentator who now works as a host for BlazeTV and as a contributor to the conservative Turning Point USA — as the primary founder of Tenet, along with her husband, Liam Donovan.
