DOJ Indicts Russian Agents in Independent Conservative Media
The US Department of Justice has produced a scathing indictment against a familiar foreign influence.
On September 4th, the DOJ charged Kostiantyn Kalashnikov (he) and Elena Afanasyeva (she), two former employees of “Russia Today” (also known as RT), for paying upwards of $10 million to American right-wing media organizations to push Kremlin propaganda. In particular, the two reportedly laundered the money through various shell companies to secretly fund a Tennessee-based conservative news organization, widely understood to be “Tenet Media”, owned and operated by husband-and-wife Liam Donovan and Lauren Chen. Four of the six commentators have stepped forward as being named in the indictment, those being “Timcast” owner and host Tim Pool (he), “The Rubin Report” owner and host Dave Rubin (he), and former Turning Point USA and Newsmax host Benny Johnson (he).
Since coming forward, Pool has been very vocal about the workings of the deal. According to him, though still maintaining full editorial control, he was paid $100,000 per week on a non-exclusive license to upload weekly videos on both his YouTube channel and Tenet Media’s YouTube Channel, which has since been deleted. Although Tenet’s hirings of Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva happened in February 2023, Pool, Rubin and Johnson had been espousing either pro-Russia or anti-Ukraine messaging before the non-exclusive licenses were agreed upon.
Per US Attorney General Merrick Garland (he), Tenet Media “never disclosed to the influencers or their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government.” Additionally, the Russian agents utilized fake personas, including inventing “Eduard Grigorian” as the investor who sponsored Tenet. Calls with Grigorian would actually be with Kalashnikov putting on a fake accent with the camera off to deceive the influencers. Afanasyeva would do the same, but with the personas “Helena Shudra” and “Victoria Pesti” to direct the editing of the content.
The charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva include conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and commit money laundering. Though these charges are serious, it’s important to note that this is simply an indictment and nothing has been proven in court, even if the evidence stacks up against Russian agents.
