Ten million dollars for right-wing influencers in America: According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Russian government is said to have financed an American media company in Tennessee called Tenet Media, which serves as a platform for some of the most prominent right-wing commentators on social media. The DOJ has charged two Russian employees of the state-owned Russian media group RT, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with having produced two thousand YouTube videos with Tenet since November with Russian state money and partly under Russian directives, which have been viewed 16 million times on social media.
Tenet Media was apparently founded in 2022 under Russian initiative by the conservative Canadian couple Lauren Tam, better known as Lauren Chen, and Liam Donovan. According to the DOJ, the platform was intended to spread pro-Russian and pro-Trump viewpoints. Chen wrote two dozen opinion pieces for RT International in 2021 and 2022 – including on the “myth of America’s white supremacy” – and has spoken out in favor of Vladimir Putin and against support for Ukraine. She works, among other things, for the conservative activist group “Turning Point USA” of the ultra-right activist Charlie Kirk and for the website “The Blaze” of the former Fox News presenter Glenn Beck. “The Blaze” has since ended its cooperation with Chen as part of the DOJ indictment.
A “network of heterodox commentators”
Tenet Media describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators on Western political and cultural events.” “Our goal is to support content creators who question institutions that see themselves as untouchable,” says the website of the company, which employs six well-known American right-wing media stars, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and David Rubin. Pool, who licensed his “Culture War” podcast through Tenet and has around three and a half million followers on YouTube and Platform X, had described Ukraine as one of “America’s greatest enemies” and said that America must withdraw all support from it and “apologize to Russia.” Now he wrote in a statement on the matter that no one but himself has ever had editorial control over his show – and suddenly claims: “Putin is a scumbag.”
According to the DOJ, at least some of the commentators were kept in the dark about Tenet’s Russian connections. According to the indictment, David Rubin and Tim Pool knew nothing about Chen and Donovan’s connection to RT and were led to believe that the company’s funding came from a – fictitious – investor named Eduard Grigoriann.
Campaign against “uncompromising America First media company”?
Benny Johnson, who has more than six million followers on social media and describes himself as the “godfather of the conservative internet,” wrote on the X platform that it was “clear that I and other influencers are victims in this alleged plot.” A “media start-up” contacted him last year with the request to produce content as an independent contributor. David Rubin, whose “Rubin Report” has almost two and a half million followers on YouTube, wrote that he “knew absolutely nothing about these fraudulent activities.” Two other of the six media personalities under contract to Tenet, Matt Christiansen and Tayler Hansen, also emphasized that they had always produced their own content. Hansen accused the DOJ of conducting a “smear campaign against an uncensored, uncompromising America First media company.”
Meanwhile, Afanasyeva apparently had considerable control over Tenet. According to the DOJ, she pressured Chen and Donovan to use Tenet videos to blame Ukraine for the attack on a Moscow concert hall in March 2024 that left 145 people dead – even though ISIS had claimed responsibility. One of her commentators would “be happy to report on it,” Chen replied. According to the indictment, Afanasyeva’s request to distribute the video of Tucker Carlson’s sultry shopping trip in Moscow as part of his interview with Putin last February was initially met with an objection from a Tenet producer that it seemed “too much like paid propaganda.” However, he was instructed to publish it anyway.
According to the DOJ, a total of $8.7 million was paid to three of the influencers between October of last year and August of this year. David Rubin alone signed a contract with Tenet for $400,000 a month (plus a welcome bonus of $100,000) in return for producing four videos a week. Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan are not named in the DOJ’s indictment; neither of them has yet commented publicly on the matter. Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly has already speculated that this could indicate that the two are working with the US Department of Justice. Most recently, fake accounts on the X platform, possibly initiated by Russia, were exposed, which were drumming up support for Donald Trump’s election campaign with AI-generated images or stolen recordings of unsuspecting European influencers. However, it is much more effective to use real commentators, judged disinformation expert Renée DiResta on Threads. “Buying authentic influencers is a better way to spend your money than creating fake ones, because they bring their own audience that trusts them.”
