The Justice Department says the Russian government is once again trying to influence the American public by secretly spreading propaganda on social media. On Wednesday, the DOJ indicted two employees of Russian state-controlled media outlet RT. According to federal investigators, RT covertly spent nearly $10 million to fund a Tennessee-based media company that produced videos in support of Russian government causes. The nearly 2,000 videos “have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone,” the DOJ said. It appears the money went to Tenet Media, which is made up of several pundits known for right-wing views, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern. Although the indictment doesn’t name Tenet Media directly, it says the Tennessee-based media company describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” — the same language found on Tenet Media’s YouTube page and site.
YouTube page for Tenet Media (Credit: YouTube)
The indictment alleges that Tenet Media is one of RT’s “covert projects” in the US. It was founded by two unnamed “foreign nationals” outside the country who previously worked for RT. According to Mother Jones, former RT employee Lauren Chen and her husband founded Tenet Media.The two RT employees facing charges—31-year-old Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and 27-year-old Elena Afanasyeva—allegedly operated under fake personas while working at Tenet Media as editors.“The company never disclosed to the influencers — or to their millions of followers — its ties to RT and the Russian government,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in Wednesday’s announcement. “Instead, the defendants and the company claimed that the company was sponsored by a private investor. That private investor was a fictitious persona.”The conspiracy can be traced back to December 2022 when one of the unidentified Tenet Media founders sought to launch a new YouTube channel by featuring “a personality that could serve as the face of the channel” who would be paid up to $2 million per year. The Justice Department adds: “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, most are directed to the publicly stated goals of the Government of Russia and RT — to amplify domestic divisions in the United States.”
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For example, Afanasyeva allegedly asked one of the founders at Tenet Media “to blame Ukraine and the United States” for a March terrorist attack in Moscow, even though it was linked to ISIS. RT and Tenet Media didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. According to federal investigators, Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva remain at large.The DOJ today also announced it had seized 32 internet domains that the Russian government allegedly planned to use “to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in US and foreign elections, including the US 2024 Presidential Election.”Earlier this summer, US investigators said RT was using a “bot farm” to spread propaganda via 968 Twitter accounts.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
I’ve been with PCMag since October 2017, covering a wide range of topics, including consumer electronics, cybersecurity, social media, networking, and gaming. Prior to working at PCMag, I was a foreign correspondent in Beijing for over five years, covering the tech scene in Asia.
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