Several right-wing American influencers described themselves as “victims” after the Justice Department accused a company they worked with of being a front for a covert Russian influence campaign.
Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin all released statements Wednesday after prosecutors claimed a Tennessee-based firm—identified in multiple media reports as Tenet Media—was secretly funded and directed by Russian state media employees.
The company, which lists Pool, Johnson, Rubin, and others as its “talent,” published English-language videos online with content that is “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s aim of “amplifying U.S. domestic divisions” to undermine American opposition to Russian interests like its war in Ukraine, prosecutors say.
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An indictment alleges that two employees of RT—the Russian state-controlled broadcaster formerly known as Russia Today—funneled almost $10 million to the content creation company, which in turn pumped out content sympathetic to Moscow’s viewpoints. The influencers aren’t accused of wrongdoing and didn’t realize they were working for the covert operation, prosecutors say, with the indictment claiming that some were misled about how the company was funded.
That’s a point several of Tenet’s influencers were eager to underscore as they came under scrutiny for their association with the company, which was allegedly paying huge sums to some of the media personalities on its books. One unidentified person was getting $400,000 a month—plus a $100,000 signing bonus—to make “four weekly videos” for the business, the indictment says, while another was contracted to get “a fee of $100,000 per video.”
“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool said in an X statement responding to the indictment. “I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed.”
Pool said his deal with the company meant the live broadcast of his Culture War Podcast went out on Tenet’s YouTube channel, but he alone had editorial control of the show. “That being said, we still do not know what is true as these are only allegations,” he added. “Putin is a scumbag, Russia sucks donkey balls.”
His statement came as a clip from one of his videos in August went viral on Reddit. “Ukraine is the enemy of this country!” Pool fumes in the footage, later adding that the U.S. should drop all of its military support to Kyiv and “apologize to Russia.”
Another clip shared by several users on X showed Pool talking about how it’s possible for a “foreign agent” to fund channels of influencers they want to boost. “‘This guy talks about things that we really like,’” Pool says in the video, speaking from the perspective of the hypothetical agent. “Dump ad money into his channel through Google AdSense and they’ll never know we were the ones funding him, and you can’t prove it.’”
Johnson said in his statement responding to the indictment—which Johnson oddly described as having being “leaked” despite it being made publicly available along with a DOJ press release—that his company’s lawyers negotiated a “standard,” arm’s-length deal with Tenet that has since been “terminated.”
“We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme,” he wrote. “My lawyers will handle anyone who states or suggests otherwise.”
Dave Rubin similarly proclaimed his own victimhood in the scheme.
“These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme,” he wrote. “I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period.”
Rubin said the “DOJ has never contacted” him about the matter and pointed to a section of the indictment—which explains how a commentator contracted by Tenet had been deceived about the true source of the company’s funding—saying it “speaks for itself.”
The filing details charges against RT employees Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, both of whom are accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act in conncetion with the scheme.
The Biden administration on Wednesday separately seized Kremlin-run websites and officially listed several Russian outlets—including RT—as foreign missions, meaning they’ll have to notify the U.S. State Department about all personnel and property they have in the United States.
The actions were explicitly taken as part of actions to “hinder malicious actors from using Kremlin-supported media as a cover to conduct covert influence activities that target the U.S. elections in 2024 and undermine our democratic institutions,” the State Department said in a news release.
Russia reacted furiously to the moves, with Moscow’s Foreign Ministry accusing Washington, D.C. of attempting to silence dissenting voices.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry, vowed there “will be a response” and said any attempts to expel or obstruct Russian reporters in the U.S. “will become the basis for taking symmetrical and/or asymmetric retaliatory measures against the American media.”
