Political commentator and YouTuber Benny Johnson, left, speaks with Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump, right, during the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Johnson has made videos for Tenet Media. The Justice Department has accused a company matching Tenet’s description of working closely with employees of Russian state broadcaster RT to secretly spread pro-Russian stories in the U.S. Johnson said he was unaware of Tenet’s ties to Russia.
DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
hide caption
convert caption
DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
Federal officials have accused Russia of using unwitting right-wing influencers in the US in an effort to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
On Wednesday, The Justice Department has charged two RT employees.Russian state television, in a secret scheme to fund and direct the production of social media videos that attracted millions of views.
RT staff, named in the indictment as Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, have been charged with conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are accused of funneling nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company that signed contracts with online influencers with large audiences.
“The company never disclosed to influencers or their millions of followers its relationship with RT and the Russian government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.
Details in the indictment match those of Nashville-based Tenet Media, including the company’s website description: “a network of mainstream commentators focused on Western political and cultural issues.”
Tenet was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen, a conservative Canadian YouTuber, and her husband, Liam Donovan, whose X-File describes him as the chairman of Tenet Media. Chen hosts Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and is a contributor to the right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. She wrote op-eds for RT in 2021 and 2022.
According to the indictment, the founders of the Tennessee company worked with Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva — who they knew were Russian — to recruit influencers to make videos that were posted on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X. The indictment says the company’s nearly 2,000 YouTube videos have attracted more than 16 million views, according to publicly available statistics on Tenet Media’s YouTube channel.
Chen and Donovan did not respond to requests for comment.
The charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva come as the U.S. Intelligence officials say foreign efforts to influence election outcomes are escalating.. On Wednesday, the government confiscated 32 internet domain names connected to a separate Russian influence operationwhile Iran has recently been accused of attempting to attack both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.
What sets RT’s work apart from many other intervention efforts is that it appears to have reached a real audience, thanks to the recognizable names attached.
“Buying authentic influencers is a much better use of money than creating fake personas, because they bring in a trusted audience of real people,” writes Renée DiResta, author of the book. The Invisible Rulers: The Men Who Turn Lies Into Truthon how online influencers spread propaganda and rumors, in a Posted on Threads.
A fictional sponsor and lucrative contracts
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Many US cable distributors have dropped the US channel RT America.from their lineup, and eventually shut down production. The indictment alleges that the video program allowed RT to reach American audiences secretly without having to appear on the airwaves.
Tenet debuted publicly in November 2023 with six prominent contributors in right-wing media, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, and Lauren Southern. The videos they created for Tenet often addressed conservative issues like “migrant gangs,” transgender people, online censorship, and attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.
“While the views expressed in the videos were not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos were generally consistent with the Russian Government’s intent to amplify divisions within the United States in order to undermine U.S. opposition to core Russian Government interests, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine,” the indictment said.
A 2012 photo of Tim Pool, who later launched a career as a right-wing social media influencer. Pool is also paid by Tenet but says he controls the editorial content of his videos
David Livingston/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
hide caption
convert caption
David Livingston/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
The indictment alleges that Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva worked with the founders of the Tennessee company to conceal the true source of its funding. They told some contributors that the company was backed by a wealthy European banker named Eduard Grigoriann. “In fact and in reality, Grigoriann is a fictitious person,” the indictment says.
The influencers were unaware of the project’s ties to Russia. On Wednesday, Johnson, Pool And Rubin posted statements on X describing himself as a victim. Southern did not respond to a request for comment.
“If these allegations are true, I, like many other figures and commentators, have been misled,” Pool wrote.
“I have absolutely no knowledge of any fraudulent activity. Period,” Rubin wrote.
Johnson said he was introduced by a “media startup” and “negotiated a standard, non-binding agreement, which was subsequently terminated.” His most recent video on Tenet Media’s YouTube channel was on August 29.
According to the indictment, the Tennessee company offered lucrative terms. One influencer was paid $400,000 a month, a $100,000 signing bonus, and additional performance bonuses in exchange for four videos a week.
Afanasyeva is accused of exerting a great deal of control over the Tennessee company’s operations and what it put out, including promoting particular perspectives that reflected Kremlin narratives.
For example, the indictment says Afanasyeva asked the company to blame Ukraine for a March 2024 terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS claimed responsibility. The company’s founder said one of the contributors “was happy to cover the incident.”
Afanasyeva also allegedly asked the company to post a video of “a prominent US political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia” — a possible reference to the former Fox News host. Tucker Carlson, people who traveled to Moscow in February. According to the indictment, a producer at the company told one of the founders that “it just seemed like a publicity stunt,” but was told to “go public with it.”
According to the indictment, Afanasyeva also urged influencers to share the company’s videos on their channels and became upset when she believed they were not promoting the videos enough.
Some Tenet Media contributors have pushed back against the idea that any outside force has shaped their work.
“No one but me has ever had full editorial control over the show, and the content is typically non-political,” Pool wrote. “The show is produced entirely by our local team without any involvement from anyone outside the company.”
“There was no impact on me in that way. There was no change in my perspective or the nature of my content,” Matt Christiansen, another Tenet Media contributor, said in a livestream Wednesday night. “How could I have been accidentally tricked into saying someone else’s words when I had written every single word?”
