Russia Bought the Right

The cost was around $10 million so far, but this might just be the first of many bombshells.

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece for The Big Picture asking an important question: Just how much has Russia compromised the Republican Party? After all, top GOP leaders on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committee had begun openly lamenting the use of Kremlin talking points on the House floor by some of their colleagues, most notably by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Moscow).

And in March, Politico reported that a number of European politicians had been recently paid by Russia to interfere in the upcoming EU elections. Russian agents had set up a fake “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe” and used money to influence officials to take pro-Russia stances. Authorities seized money and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament had accepted cash bribes.

Given this behavior by Russia in Europe and the widespread adoption of Russia propaganda within Congress itself, like Carrie Bradshaw I couldn’t help but wonder: “Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly?”

We are one important step closer to that answer with yesterday’s announcement of indictments, which were part of a larger Justice Department investigation into Putin’s influence on our elections. Two Russian nationals were named as defendants, but far more importantly, they funneled nearly $10 million through shell companies to a Tennessee-based company called Tenet Media—the home of several high profile right wing influencers.

These influencers, with millions of fans online, were paid to promote pro-Russian stories, particularly around Ukraine. The stories included blatant misinformation, including attempts to falsely blame Ukraine for terror attacks in Moscow. 

The money also was used to sow discord within our politics to attempt to re-elect Donald Trump. 

The payments from Russia were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to some of the top commentators on YouTube and Twitter—all at the expense of our democracy.

Today I’ll take a deeper dive into how Russia pulled it off and with what intent. Then I’ll look at two commentators in greater detail—Tim Pool and Benny Johnson—and show how extensive their influence and the damage they did were. Finally, I’ll discuss how this important case could embroil many other notable persons and organizations and could wind up changing the nature of our political discourse.

From Russia, with shells

The Russians don’t make it easy to follow the money trail. In this case, the $10 million used to pay for U.S. mouthpieces to advance the Kremlin’s agenda made its way to Tenet Media and then into the hands of the influencers via a very complex series of shell companies.

Jackie Singh, who was the Lead Incident Response and Threat Detection Analyst on the Biden campaign, put together a handy visual that shows the flow of money through shell companies:

I can’t really say it any better than she did in her written summary, so if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details, check out that link; otherwise, just know that the actual funding went through seven foreign entities in three different foreign countries to launder the funds into the hands of the social media influencers.

So what was this $10 million intended to buy? There was damning evidence submitted with the indictment. Here is just a taste of what the Russians wanted the influencers to cover and who their target audience was:

Take particular note of No. 8 under “Campaign topics”: Russia wanted these paid influencers to amplify the idea that the U.S. under Biden was being drawn into the war in Ukraine and that U.S. troops would be killed as a result. Note also the explicit racial targeting of “White Americans” in the lower and middle class.

Two purchased pawns

The indictment lists several commentators but doesn’t identify them by name. But it doesn’t take much sleuthing to understand who they are. And for purposes of today’s discussion, I’ll focus on two: Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, both of whom have denied that that they knew Russia was behind their payments. (I’ll discuss that more toward the end of this piece.) 

Tim Pool is a right wing agitator who has millions of fans across social media. His podcast is popular with the MAGA right, and he even interviewed Donald Trump on it back in May.

Here’s a look at how Pool pushed Russian propaganda about Ukraine, even calling it the “greatest threat to America and the world,” alleging that Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, and calling for the U.S. to “pull out all military support” and “apologize to Russia.”

Pool sure looks like he’s reading off of a script, and he sure sounds like he got paid by Russia to spout off like this. Pool allegedly received $100,000 per video from Tenet Media—a whopping sum.

As disinformation specialist Pekka Kallioniemi noted, Pool has been vocal on Twitter against Ukraine, and “especially on the US military aid to the country.” Pool has also “suggested that Trump could potentially de-escalate the war quickly.” Kallioniemi observed that Pool’s tweets “became much more common after TENET got their funding from Russia.” 

Like Tim Pool, right wing agitator Benny Johnson has been very vocal about stopping aid to Ukraine, even while emphasizing domestic problems in the U.S. Apparently, Johnson is “Commentator-1” and was paid $400,000 each month plus a signing bonus of $100,000, according to the indictment:

Nice work if you can get it.

Here’s an example of Johnson’s divisive media, where he and his guest go full on fascist:

Lately, Johnson has been pushing the false narrative that Harris is behind in the polls. (Polymarket is funded in part by billionaire Peter Thiel.)

Johnson also helped radical Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) set up his “Based Mike Lee” account—and was personally thanked by the senator for it.

We will likely learn a lot more in the coming weeks and months about how Tenet Media influenced, both directly and indirectly, the messaging of commentators like Pool and Johnson. What is already clear is that everything they have said or done since accepting Russian money is now suspect. 

There is nothing in the indictment that alleges that Pool and Johnson or any other commentators paid by Tenet Media actually knew that the money had come from Russia. Both individuals issued vehement denials and cast themselves as “victims” of this scheme. 

“We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme,” Johnson wrote in a post.

“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool said. “The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company.” 

But color me skeptical, especially around the anti-Ukraine messaging. Are we to believe that someone like Pool never thought to question why he was being asked to parrot Kremlin talking points and where all this money was coming from? As Bulwark contributor Christian Vanderbrouk put it,

“these guys see made-up ‘psyops’ everywhere until a mysterious foreigner offers them fantastic amounts of money for practically nothing then they turn into Mr Magoo”

Pulling on threads

There are some interesting connections between individuals identified in the indictment and the entire right-wing information ecosystem.

For example, as Will Sommer of the Washington Post pointed out, Tenet Media’s co-founder, Lauren Chen, is a host on right-wing BlazeTV and is affiliated with and has contributed to Turning Point USA, the right-wing youth focused group run by Charlie Kirk. 

Tenet Media helped amplify Tucker Carlson’s positive reporting on Russia. How that came to be is particularly telling, as David Corn of Mother Jones highlighted. Carlson had visited a grocery store during his trip to Russia and the Russians wanted it amplified. One of the producers initially balked. “They want me to post this” but “it feels like overt shilling.” The two Tenet founders discussed it, and they asked that the company “put it out there.” 

Another disturbing fact is that Elon Musk, who owns Twitter, was one of the biggest amplifiers of Tenet Media posts, often commenting with just a single word, punctuation mark or emoji and thereby giving the posts huge visibility to his nearly 200 million followers.

Reporters are already digging deeper to see how far Russia’s money’s reach went. It seems clear that the Kremlin would not place all of its precious eggs into one Tenet Media basket, meaning there likely may be other avenues for the funneling of money we haven’t heard about yet. 

Meanwhile, pro-Russian accounts across social media are now tainted with the strong possibility that they have been bought and paid for by Moscow. This could lead to many of them simply going quiet to avoid further scrutiny. 

How far this trail will lead remains uncertain, but one thing is already clear: The panic by Russia apologists and the Putin caucus is real.