Russian Media Influencing Fallout
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
It funny that DOJ outlined all Rep talking points (inflation, immigration, prices, crime) as signs that could mean a Russian influence operation.
From the Cowpie with a Keyboard. The fog of alcohol is thick with you.
ANDY NGO REPORTS: Tenet Media founders were raided just as the DOJ indictment dropped
Update: Shortly after this report was published, Tenet Media announced privately to its staff that it was ceasing operations, effective immediately.
The founders of Tenet Media, the right-wing media startup accused by the U.S. DOJ of illegally taking nearly $10 million from Russian state actors to launder Russian influence, were raided on Wednesday as the indictment was unsealed, according to sources who spoke exclusively with The Post Millennial.
The sources, who are not authorized to publicly speak on record, said the authorities confiscated the electronic devices belonging to Tenet Media owners Lauren Chen, also known as Lauren Yu Sum Tam, and her husband, Liam Donovan, around the time the Biden-Harris administration announced the indictment on Wednesday.
"I don’t think the owners had any idea [about the investigation]," one source said. "[The raid] just came out of nowhere."
Sources said the couple, who are Canadian nationals living in Tennessee, had recently returned from a trip abroad.
Chen, a right-wing YouTuber and social media personality, and her husband have not commented publicly. The company’s social media accounts were still posting content just before the indictment was unsealed.
Sources tell TPM that Tenet Media staff have been kept entirely in the dark since the indictment’s announcement, with the founders not communicating at all with any employees or contributors.
Update: On Thursday evening, Donovan wrote a message to staff announcing that Tenet Media was over: "As most of you may know by now, there is a federal investigation surrounding Tenet at the moment. There have been no indictments against us or the company. We have hired legal counsel and are working through the legal issues. We hope to provide more clarity soon. However, it is clear that given the nature of the investigation, we have no choice but to stop all work on Tenet. I do not foresee it coming back."
Tenet Media has not issued any public comment except for one post on their X account, apparently unauthorized, that was deleted within a few seconds on Wednesday.
The deleted post read: "[F]ired employee here access still. there [sic] is evidence we were actually funded by Russia and it’s a disgrace. we [sic] are traitors to America."
Desperate Democrats Are Pushing Yet Another Version Of The Russia Collusion Hoax
Now they’re back with a warmed-over version of the same tired tactic. Call it the Russia collusion hoax 3.0. According to the DOJ indictment, the so-called “malign influence operation” involved two Russian nationals who worked for RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a state-run media outlet. These RT employees allegedly ran a series of “covert projects” that included funneling $10 million to a Tennessee-based company called Tenet Media, which was founded in 2022 by founded by Liam Donovan and his wife, Lauren Chen.
Chen is a right-wing Turning Points USA provocateur of sorts who made videos for The Blaze (which has since cut ties with her) and proffered what were meant to be edgy conservative takes on social media. The scheme Chen and Donovan allegedly ran was to fund other right-wing(ish) commentators like Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson without disclosing that their company was “funded and directed” by RT. Rubin, Pool, and Johnson all released statements Wednesday insisting they were deceived by Tenet and are victims of this Russia propaganda plot.
In the end, it appears that the scheme wasn’t all that successful. According to the indictment, the RT employees running the project grew frustrated that the social media influencers they had paid through Tenet weren’t sharing Tenet’s videos or promoting the company enough. According to Johnson, the contract his lawyers negotiated last year with Tenet was “a standard, arms-length deal, which was later terminated.”
But the details of the indictment aren’t the big takeaway from this story, even if the allegations prove true. The big takeaway is the timing of all this. Biden’s DOJ is once again promoting a false narrative of Russian election meddling designed to benefit Trump, and doing so in the runup to the November election. They want to portray Trump support online as fake, funded and directed by foreign enemies in Moscow, and thereby paint Trump as a Putin lackey — yet again.
Sorry, but we’ve seen this movie before. Yes, Moscow might have hatched a half-baked scheme to fund right-wing social media influencers without their knowledge, just as Moscow spent $100,000 on Facebook ads in 2016 to sow division. Foreign powers trying to meddle in our elections is concerning, but it’s also not earth-shattering. A lot of nations do it. None of it has ever amounted to much, and compared to what our own federal agencies have done, it doesn’t even rate.
What’s far more concerning is the way our own Justice Department and federal intelligence agencies are meddling in the election. The plain truth is that by announcing this indictment now, inserting it into the news cycle, and knowing the corporate media will do its part to portray online Trump support as inauthentic and funded by Russia, Biden’s DOJ is meddling in the election in a far more serious way than Tenet or RT or anyone in Moscow could ever hope to do.
Chopticon64
Well-Known Member
So now they aren’t even denying they were being paid by the Russians! Harris will make sure all these folks will be tried for treason.
I was so sick of Pool and that dumb hat he wore cause he was bald, good riddance Benedict Arnold!
What were the TREASONOUS Acts, you Delusional loon
Don't be jealous ...
His quote to me was very short and very dramatic:
"This is the beginning of the narrative that social media needs government regulation." He also said this would not be the end of this story and that Elon Musk and X have been specifically targeted by the United States government. So on top of trying to influence the election, this bullshit story is mean to try and curb free speech on the X platform. I would also like to point out thanks to @TheGillReport that sitting next to Garland when he made this announcement is Lisa Monaco, who was instrumental in getting 51 intelligence officers to sign the Hunter Laptop Russian disinformation letter.
I mean considering she was pushing for conservatives to not vote for Trump...sounds like an objective person would believe Putin wants Harris to win.
https://twitter.com/Infantry828/status/1831457539248312728
You are such an obvious waste of oxygen. There is a nice spot reserved for you at the apex of the Solomons Bridge. Use it.
Those rascally Russians are at it again! Buckle up. Russiagate 2.0 has officially begun, just in time for the election. The New York Times ran a story this morning headlined, “Russia Secretly Worms Its Way Into America’s Conservative Media.” Never mind they just caught another deeply embedded Chinese spy in New York. Putin is always the problem. And, even after reading the article, it’s not at all clear that ‘America’s conservative media’ was involved.
Remember that, during covid, the U.S. government paid influencers to push jabs and lockdown narratives. Biden and Cackling Harris are paying influencers to promote their campaign. And NATO paid influencers to come to their big confab recently to promote warmongering.
But when Russia does it, it’s pure evil.
The gist was that a couple Russians hired a Canadian PR firm called Tenet Media. Tenet then paid social media influencers, to buy original content that was publicly posted on Tenet Media’s website. Tenet then “promoted” its original media channels on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
This week, with great fanfare, including an appearance by Grandma Garland herself, the DOJ indicted two Russian employees of Russia’s TV network “Russia Today,” in absentia, for money laundering and for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which is only enforced against conservatives. Hunter Biden could not be reached for comment. The DOJ’s indictment named but did not charge a variety of U.S. influencers like Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, describing them as unwitting victims of the foreign influence scheme.
The Times asked Russia Today to comment on the indictment, and the network promptly replied, “We eat U.S. D.O.J. indictments for breakfast. With lots of sour cream, usually.”
I would have guessed they’d eat it with ketchup, but maybe that’s just my American bias.
The DOJ’s indictment was unsurprisingly short on details of exactly what ‘influence’ the Russians were allegedly pushing. The only concrete example the indictment cited was general criticism of the Ukraine war, which seems like low-hanging fruit. I mean, I’ve personally dished out that kind of criticism in double handfuls. (Full Disclosure: I am not being paid by the Russians or anybody else for criticizing the Proxy War.)
It’s still gross, but this kind of pre-election DOJ censorship is vastly better than what we were dealing with the last time around. At least we can see them doing it this time.
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Boeing spaceship is back; mosquito lockdowns surprisingly questioned; Hunter pleads guilty; Trump sentencing schedule change; Georgia shooting update; DOJ declares war on influencers; more.
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