Russia secretly worms its way into America’s conservative media

In early 2022, a young couple from Canada, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, registered a new company in Tennessee that went on to create a social media outlet called Tenet Media.

By November , they had assembled a lineup of major conservative social media stars, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, to post original content on Tenet’s platform. The site then began posting hundreds of videos – trafficking in pointed political commentary as well as conspiracy theories about election fraud, COVID-19, immigrants and Russia’s war with Ukraine – that were then promoted across the spectrum of social media, from YouTube to TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram and Rumble.

It was all, federal prosecutors now say, a covert Russian influence operation. On Wednesday, the Justice Department accused two Russians of helping orchestrate $10 million in payments to Tenet in a scheme to use those stars to spread Kremlin-friendly messages.

The disclosures reflect the growing sophistication of the Kremlin’s long-standing efforts to shape American public opinion and advance Russia’s geopolitical goals, which include, according to American intelligence assessments, the election of former President Donald Trump in November.

In 2016 and 2020, Russia employed armies of internet trolls, fake accounts and bot farms to try to reach American audiences, with debatable success. The operation that prosecutors described this past week shows a pivot to exploiting already established social media influencers, who, in this case, generated as many as 16 million views on Tenet’s YouTube channel alone.

Most viewers were presumably unaware, as the influencers themselves said they were, that Russia was paying for it all.

“Influencers already have a level of trust with their audience,” said Jo Lukito, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s journalism school who studies Russian disinformation. “So, if a piece of information can come through the mouth of an existing influencer, it comes across as more authentic.”

The indictment – which landed like a bombshell in the country’s conservative media ecosystem – also underscored the growing ideological convergence between President Vladimir Putin’s Russia and a significant portion of the Republican Party since Trump’s rise to political power.

The Kremlin has long sought to exploit divisions on both sides of the American political spectrum, but contentious conservative voices provide ample fodder for its own propaganda, especially when it involves criticism of the Biden administration or, more broadly, of the country’s foreign policy, including support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The federal investigation that led to the indictment unsealed Wednesday is part of a broader government effort, first reported in the New York Times, to combat Russian disinformation, election interference and cyberattacks. Administration officials have said the effort could lead to more charges.

The indictment detailed the lengths Russia went to try to make Tenet a player in the country’s political discourse, while obfuscating the fact that it was footing the bill.

That included transferring at least $9.7 million from Russia through shell companies in countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius. Those payments accounted for 90% of the company’s revenue from last October to August, the indictment said.

Prosecutors have not, so far, charged Chen and Donovan. It is unclear where they are, and they did not respond to requests for comment. The indictment did note that neither they nor Tenet had registered as a representative of a foreign government, a requirement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.

Tenet’s influencers all described themselves as victims of the Russian ruse, and at times disparaged the federal investigation. They emphasized that they took no direction from Russians, though the indictment details various efforts by the company’s sponsors to sow specific narratives, some of which appeared in the content they posted.

In one instance, Johnson, a former journalist with 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube, suggested on his own show that Ukraine might have been responsible for a deadly attack at a concert hall in Moscow in March, reflecting a since-debunked Russian claim. (A branch of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.)

Another influencer on Tenet’s roster, Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian commentator with more than 1.2 million followers between YouTube and X, produced a video mocking the Summer Olympics in Paris in July, echoing Russia’s efforts to denigrate the Games and their French hosts.

The Russians even pushed Tenet to highlight a video from Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star who produces his own online show. He made it during a visit to Moscow this year, marveling about the abundance on display in a supermarket in the city.

A producer working for Tenet, in a message cited in the indictment, thought Carlson’s video “just feels like overt shilling” but, after being pressured by Tenet’s owners, agreed to post the clip in any case.

Nina Jankowicz, a co-founder of the American Sunlight Project, an advocacy group in Washington that fights disinformation online, said that “this is a classic case of information laundering.”

“The Russians and other foreign actors have used it for decades to obscure the source of influence operations,” she went on. “In this case, they chose influencers who were already engaging in rage bait, exploiting the preexisting fissures in our society for clicks.”

Flush with Russian cash, Tenet certainly compensated some its influencers well. It paid at least $8.7 million to the top three influencers, who were not named but who appear to be Rubin, Pool and Johnson based on details in the indictment, such as the number of followers on social media.

According to the indictment, Rubin received $400,000 a month, plus a $100,000 signing bonus, to produce four videos a week on Tenet’s YouTube channel. Pool was paid $100,000 per video, which he produced weekly.

The contracts put those three on the same pay scale as some of those on Forbes’ “Top Creators 2023” list, though Pool portrayed his payment as standard in an interview on “The Ben Shapiro Show” on Friday.

Under terms of their arrangements, the influencers could keep producing other content separate from the work they did for Tenet.

A representative of Johnson declined to comment but provided details of the timeline and nature of his contract with Tenet. On X, however, Johnson said he had acted “as an independent contractor” under what he termed “a standard, arms-length deal which was later terminated.”

Rubin, who is the creator and host of “The Rubin Report,” a political talk show on YouTube and Blaze Media, a conservative media company, said in a post online that he had no knowledge of connections between Tenet and Russia.

So did Pool, who has promoted Trump’s election fraud conspiracies and portrayed Ukraine as an “enemy” on his popular online show. In his response on X, he directed a crude insult to Putin. On Thursday, he said that the FBI had invited him to a “voluntary interview” and that he would cooperate with the investigation.

Prosecutors said the two Russians charged Wednesday, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, had violated FARA and laws against money laundering. The pair are employees of RT, the Russian global television network.

In a response to a request for comment about the indictment, the network replied sarcastically. “We eat U.S. DOJ indictments for breakfast,” its statement said. “With lots of sour cream, usually.”

Donovan, 30, Tenet’s co-founder, appears on corporate records in Tennessee as a founder of Roaming USA Corp., the company that later created Tenet. His account on X, which has not posted any messages since July, describes him as Tenet’s president. Among those who shared his posts, along with the company’s, was the owner of X, Elon Musk.

Tenet appears to have ceased operations since Wednesday. YouTube, in a statement Thursday evening, said it had taken down its account on the platform, along with four others associated with Chen. Chen, who is married to Donovan and is also 30, worked for RT from March 2021 until February 2022. RT’s website still describes her as a YouTuber who was “most passionate” about topics that “include dating culture, family values, individual liberty, gender equality and issues surrounding race.”

She also produced podcasts on Blaze Media and served as a contributor to Turning Point USA, the conservative organization run by Charlie Kirk. Her profiles on Kirk’s site and on Blaze Media’s disappeared this past week. Her account on X, which remains active, has nearly 600,000 followers.

In a statement, Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon said, “Lauren Chen was an independent contractor, whose contract has been terminated.”

For at least two of the influencers, the offer to join Tenet appeared to raise concerns about the origins of such generous contracts.

The indictment detailed how they questioned the company’s backers. In response, Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, along with Chen and Donovan, provided a profile page of a fictitious European banker, Eduard Grigoriann.

They also arranged a phone call with someone purporting to be the banker. That was enough, apparently, to assuage any concerns.

“It’s lamentable that these influencers conducted so little due diligence,” Jankowicz said. “When something seems too good to be true – in this case, getting paid $100,000 per video for content you were already making – it probably is.”

Another of those who worked for Tenet was Tayler Hansen, who is perhaps best known for filming the shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the U.S. Capitol during the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

For years, he scraped by financially by licensing his footage, selling branded merchandise and soliciting donations from supporters as he gradually built a following of more than 170,000 on X.

When Tenet approached him last year and offered the opportunity to work for a biweekly salary, he jumped at the chance, he said in an interview. Tenet also hired Hansen’s producer and covered his travel expenses.

“I had full autonomy, and there’s really no point in not working with a company that grants you full autonomy,” Hansen said. “I’ve never had as much freedom.”

Asked how he thought Tenet made money, he said simply, “Donors.”

Martin J. Riedl, a journalism professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who studies the spread of misinformation on social media, said the case of Tenet spotlighted gaping regulatory holes when it came to the American political system.

While the Federal Election Commission has strict disclosure rules for television and radio advertisements, it has no such restrictions for paid social media influencers.

The result is an enormous loophole – one that the Russians appeared to exploit.

“Influencers have been around for a while,” Riedl said, “but there are few rules around their communication, and political speech is not regulated at all.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.