When DOJ announced today it would unseal legal actions against Russian influence operations, the former President’s failson complained, “Here we go again. LOL”
Some hours later, it became clear that a number of right wing influencers, including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, were unwittingly on the take from Russia, via Tenet Media, which DOJ alleges in a new indictment is a front company for RT.
I consider myself a connoisseur of a well-written indictments. And this, released days after Labor Day and implicating a number of Americans, may be one of my favorites.
Start with the two crimes alleged, like the innermost layer in a matryoshka doll.
The indictment only charges two things. First, conspiracy to violate FARA (18 USC 371), based on just only charges four overt acts, all pertaining to RT persona Elena Afanasyeva:
- Konstantyn Kalashnikov’s addition of Afanasyeva to Tenet’s Discord Server in August 2023.
- Afanasyeva’s circulation fo 841 video clips that got posted onto Tenet’s social media channels, possibly including the video of Tucker Carlson getting off after shopping in a Moscow grocery store.
- Tenet’s June 2024 authorization for Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov to post on Tenet’s platform.
- 30 wire transfers to Tenet, though countries including Türkiye, the Emirates, Mauritius, Czechia, and Hungary, all ultimately going through a bank in NYC.
The second charge, conspiracy to commit money laundering, describes only that Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva used a variety of means to hide that RT was paying for all this.
To prove the FARA charge — one you’d only need to prove if Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva showed up in the US for arrest — you’d need to prove that the two RT people succeeded in influencing US politics, and deliberately hid that they were doing so on behalf of a Russian entity. And RT is sufficient — you wouldn’t need to show that RT was paid by the Russian government.
So you have to show how they worked through cut-outs, the two people who run Tenet media and through them the influencers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson who got duped.
And that requires you showing how RT set up fake personas, including a fake funder named Eduard Grigoriann, as a front to use to convince Pool and Johnson this was all legit, so that after one of them — I believe this is Pool — asked for more information about whom he’d be working with, they would have ready answers.
One of the other figureheads — either Johnson or Dave Rubin — complained about this fake funder (FBI mocks them all because they keep spelling his name wrong), because he used woke language:
Commentator-1 had “a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the reference to ‘social justice.” I think it may be because that’s usually a term used by liberals, but we’re trying to create a conservative network.”
That led to a Zoom meeting that the persona, Grigoriann may have missed, because they fucked up the time difference between Paris and Moscow.
At approximately 8:58 a.m. Central Time that day, “Eduard Grigoriann” replied to his earlier email: “I am there guys.” The time, in fact, was 3:58 p.m. in Paris — but it was 4:58 p.m. in Moscow. Approximately two minutes later, “Eduard Grigoriann” performed a Google search for “time in Paris.” “Eduard Grigoriann” them replied to his email, in part: “Sorry, wrong hour. Didn’t sync the calendar.”
There’s some real clown show stuff in this. But it didn’t matter for Pool and whichever one is Commentator-1, because they signed contracts worth almost $5 million a year or $100,000 per non-exclusive video.
The money laundering part of the indictment describes that RT has laundered $10 million to pay for Tenet’s work.
Which brings me back to the logic of this indictment. As noted, it’s all focused on the Russians, and even there, the evidence in the indictment consists of IP addresses showing they accessed Tenet servers from the same IP address they used to access their Gmail accounts from Moscow. There’s undoubtedly a lot of SIGINT behind what the US government knows about the operation.
It’s not necessary to prove criminal charges.
And there’s no First Amendment equities, because Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov are both overseas.
Even if DOJ hadn’t missed the 60-day window for the election by two days, there’d be no election implications for the same reason.
But this indictment will continue to work for the next two months, until the election and thereafter.
In the presser announcing this and another legal action, DOJ emphasized that this investigation is very much ongoing.
For people like Pool and one of the other Commentators, so long as they claim to be duped by these awful Russians, they’re in the clear, legally (interestingly, Pool has ties to Cassandra Fairbanks, who was targeted by RT in 2016). In fact, Pool has posted to just that effect.
My statement regarding allegations and the leaked [sic] DOJ Indictment
Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed
The Culture War Podcast was licensed by Tenet Media, it existed well before any license agreement with Tenet and it will continue to exist after any such agreement expires. The only change with the agreement was that the location of the live broadcast moved to Tenet’s Youtube Channel.
Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show and the contents of the show are often apolitical. Examples include discussing spirituality, dating, and videos games.
The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company
TCW is separate company not associated with http://Timcast.com or other properties. It exists solely for the production of the Culture War Podcast
That being said, we still do not know what is true as these are only allegations.
Putin is a scumbag, Russia sucks donkey balls
And to the journalists who wish to jump the gun, create their own narrative, or lie about what is currently going on,
you can eat my irish ass
Tim Pool is now on the record with “donkey balls.”
But there are other people — certainly the two founders of Tenet — whose actions might be crimes, either Foreign Agent and/or sanctionable crimes.
DOJ doesn’t tell us about the fate of those people. Perhaps there are other indictments buried somewhere. Perhaps they are coming.
Anyway, read the whole thing: It’s a tale of right wing grift, sloppy operational security that was nonetheless adequate to satisfy far right grifters, and a far bigger spend on the part of Russia to play in this year’s election.
And read it, too, for how even the producers who worked for Tenet, who also appear to have known the gig, thought that Tucker Carlson’s video, pretending to be wowed by a Russian supermarket was too much. “It just feels like overt shilling.”
Nevertheless they shilled away.