We have some updates on the Justice Department indictments of two Russian nationals who work for RT, and how a Tennessee based media company called tenet essentially used prominent right wing content creators here in the United States to unwittingly [00:00:18] spread pro-Russian propaganda. But one person didn't do so unwittingly, and that was the co-founder of tenet, Lauren Chen. The other co-founder is actually her husband. So the indictment didn't list their names. [00:00:34] And I want to be clear that Lauren Chen and her husband have not been indicted. There is a possibility they could be in the future, depending on how this case plays out. But the indictment does clearly note multiple times that, Lauren Chen and her husband seem to know that the money was coming from Russia, [00:00:53] and they went to some lengths to basically conceal that fact from the content creators, even fabricating a person out of whole cloth. So let's get into those details. Actually, before we do, I think we covered this story yesterday when you were out. [00:01:10] And I'm sure you have a lot to say about the story in general. So I'm going to give you an opening to just tell me what you think so far. Yeah. Look, we've had beefs with some of those guys and, and, and at different times we've gotten along with some of those guys. [00:01:25] So I on a personal level, I wish this story wasn't, didn't exist and that they had never done this. But I got to be honest with you guys. So they're getting paid $100,000 a video. [00:01:40] Okay. Now if we were paid $100,000 per video, we'd never have to ask you for another dime again. Okay. Because because that's not the economics of digital media. So, some of the videos would get 8000 views. That's like 50 bucks, man. So then they ask, okay, who's giving the money? [00:01:59] And they claim, oh, it is just a wealthy businessman, and they make up a name. You didn't Google the guys because if you googled, you'd know that he doesn't exist. So you never even bothered to ask. They're getting 400,000 a month for just four videos. [00:02:15] If you do that over the course of a year, that's $4.8 million. And you didn't bother asking who was giving you that money, you didn't bother googling. And all the videos happen to be pro-Russia and against Ukraine. Wow, what a coincidence. [00:02:31] So this whole thing of like we were victimized too. I'm sorry, but I mean, I'm not saying that they are criminally responsible or anything like that, but don't tell me that you had no idea what was going on. And golly gee, no, sorry, but I don't believe you at all. [00:02:47] So look, the content creators, Tim Pool, Betty Johnson, Dave Rubin, there were others, but those are some of the more prominent names. According to the indictment. Didn't know where the source of the money was coming from and that they were lied to by Tenet Media, and a lot of the details of what was [00:03:08] going on was intentionally concealed. But, Jake, the most shocking part about this whole indictment is that one of them actually did ask questions, and it was the person I least expected Dave Rubin. Okay. So Dave Rubin wanted to know more about, like, this wealthy businessman [00:03:26] who's like, funding the whole operation. And not only did they make up a name, they made up a resume. Okay. They, like, literally made up a resume. And in the resume resume, apparently, the thing that, alerted Dave Rubin to potential red flags was that, I guess social justice [00:03:44] was mentioned in the resume. And he's like, social justice. I don't know about that, but, there is no other indication, at least according to this indictment, that the content creators knew for sure what was going on. So who knows? The story could develop from here, but that's what we know so far. [00:04:01] But I want to be clear, I'm not saying that they definitely knew. And somebody told them, hey, it's the Russians, and they took the money anyway. What I'm saying is, when someone says, I'm going to give you a preposterous amount of money for this video, and then they give you a fake name and you don't bother googling it, [00:04:16] and then they tell you to say ridiculous things in favor of Russia. And another part of the story that's amazing is, you know, they say one of the producers goes, well, this seems like overt shilling. It's in the indictment. And and they go, shut up and say it. [00:04:33] And they go, okay. Yes, sir. Of course sir. Please. So you're telling me you had no idea that the massively pro-Russian Anti-ukrainian videos you were getting paid $100,000 a video to do? Like you didn't at a bare minimum. [00:04:51] You didn't look into it at all because you didn't want to know. Why didn't you want to know? Because you had an excellent idea where that money was coming from. Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to tight U power. [00:05:09] Our honest reporting. You do it at tight.com/team and we love you for it. So we're going to show you the very part of the indictment that Jake is referring to. But let's get into the founders of Tenet Media, which was at the center of this whole influence scheme, influence peddling. [00:05:28] Now, according to the indictment, Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, referred to as founder one and founder two in the document, worked together to mask U.S. Company one that's Tenet's, true source of funding, including from the company's [00:05:44] own talent, which includes Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin. Now, altogether, Tenet Media took in nearly $10 million from the Russians to carry out this influence campaign in the United States. And if you're wondering, okay, how was the money divvied up? [00:06:00] About 8 million went toward the content creators and when it comes to Lauren Chen and her husband. They took about 700,000, nearly $1 million of that money for themselves. But the real moneymakers here were the content creators who, according [00:06:17] to the indictment, were unwitting, unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda. Okay, so let's take a look at the portions of the indictment that I think are interesting here. So the indictment says, describing U.S. Company ones investor to commentator one and commentator two. [00:06:34] The commentators, of course, are the content creators as Edward Gregorian, a purported finance professional in Western Europe, founder one and founder two. That's Lauren Chen and her husband admitted to each other in their private communications that their investors were in truth and in fact, the Russians. [00:06:54] The same term that founder one and founder two previously used to refer to RT while working directly under contract with RT, as described above. Lauren Chen had been working with RT beginning in 2021. That's just a bit of information to know about. [00:07:11] On or about May 27th, 2023, founder one messaged founder two on discord. Quote I'm going to ask the Russians about hiring producer two this coming week. Approximately two days later, founder one messaged producer two on discord. [00:07:28] Here's a list of responsibilities I sent over to the investors to approve. Bringing you on. Waiting to hear back on timelines. Salary. On or about August 8th of 2023, per persona one informed founder one and [00:07:45] founder two in discord that the request to hire a producer slash booker was approved. So I give you that portion of the indictment to show you that they would just kind of refer to the, you know, the source of the funding as our investor, our investor. [00:08:01] And to your point, I totally agree that it's like hard to believe that any content creator certainly a content creator like Tim Pool or Dave Rubin, who know what it's like to make money off something like YouTube. Like, it's hard to believe that they would just buy that. [00:08:16] There's like a, you know, benevolent investor who's not, you know, trying to influence peddle in the United States. But you also have to remember that on the right wing, there's all sorts of billionaires who just give money to media outlets to regurgitate the message [00:08:33] that they want them to regurgitate. That is not illegal as long as it's an American businessman doing it. What was illegal in this case was that there was a very clear scheme by the Russians to spread propaganda here in the United States, and their front was a US based media company that they were funding. [00:08:50] And by the way, I should also note that RT had previously been sanctioned by the federal government. And so RT knew that they couldn't just influence peddle under their own name. So this was kind of a roundabout way of doing it. Yeah. So look, this is this story is super frustrating because I want [00:09:08] to have cross-partisan conversations and I want people to be open minded. But we have to point out things that are obvious. So look, to Anna's point, there's a in the right wing media ecosystem. [00:09:24] There's so much money and people get paid by fracking, company founders and heirs to the fortunes of different, you know, banks and railroad companies and oil companies left over, etc.. [00:09:42] Right? There's just so much Matt Sheffield who used to work here, used to be on the right. He actually helped found Newsbusters, a big right wing media site, etc. Then he came over to the left and he often talks about this. And he did while he was here. He says the biggest difference between the right and the left is in the right wing. [00:09:58] There's so much money. There's money everywhere because they're paying for propaganda, whether it's for fracking, it's for Russia, it's for drill, baby drill, whatever. It's for. It's filled to the rim with propaganda. On the left, there's none of that. [00:10:13] So he comes over and he's like, where's the money? There's no money. Right. So here we actually on the left, we actually have to earn our money. And so that's and digital media is so hard. All these companies have gone under Mashable. Mike attention all of like dozens of companies have gone bankrupt [00:10:30] because it's so hard to make a living. Then you see a guy like Dave Rubin works here. You know, we all have, you know, modest income, etc., right? Gets a nice paying job at Riot Media that has nothing to do with politics. I go, great, fantastic. Good luck Dave, we appreciate it, etc. We're on great terms. All of a sudden he takes this massive turn to the right [00:10:48] while pretending to be a classical liberal or whatever the hell he was saying, right? And then it starts attacking us wildly and all of a sudden a giant mansion pops out, and then you look at his views and you're like, those are microscopic. How is he getting this much money? Because when you go to the right wing, it's like shopping for [00:11:08] which funder you would like, who's propaganda would you like me to do? Which is ironically very similar to mainstream media. And let's note that too here. So it's not a defense of these guys. It's two things can be true at the same time. Mainstream media was tut tutting. Well, okay, you guys take $17 billion from politicians [00:11:27] every election cycle these days. That's at least the last one. And then you guys tell us that the politicians are honest and that we should never talk about money in politics because all the money in politics comes to you. So us politicians buy you instead of Russian politicians. So, look, I'm just giving you all the context here. [00:11:44] But that's why that right wing media ecosystem being filled with so like, millions and millions of dollars in propaganda money is an odd but true defense of these guys. They might have thought like, I don't know, we you know, these guys give [00:11:59] us money all the time to say stuff. Oh, these guys happen to be Russian. I mean, they probably would have taken it if they were Libyan, I don't know, but but we don't have that on our side. That's why we do the fundraising That's why we ask you to be members, etc.. But when you see those mansions popping out out of nowhere, when there's [00:12:16] like 18 views on something, you begin to get a sense that somebody's funding that. Okay, so two more parts of the indictment that I want to read to you. So let's go to graphic four here, where the indictment states, on or about May 12th of 2021, founder two messaged founder one on discord. [00:12:35] Quote so we're billing the Russians from the corporation, right? Like, honestly, Jake, the openness in which they're referring to the source of funding makes me wonder, were they just incredibly negligent and like, just not careful at all [00:12:53] with the crime that they were committing? Or did they not realize that this was illegal? Now, again, the founders of tenant have not been indicted. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's because the DOJ is working on those indictments, or if [00:13:09] these two individuals are cooperating with the DOJ as part of this investigation. I have no idea. But the way they just openly say to each other in written form, we're getting the money from the Russians is just weird to me. [00:13:24] Okay, but it is what it is. No. Look, Anna, my two thoughts on that are one is, you know, yesterday we were getting it from ExxonMobil and earlier we were getting it from JP Morgan Chase. And today we're getting it from Russia. So maybe it's Tuesday to them. Right. And the other thing is if you ever say the word Russia, you know what's going [00:13:43] to happen with the right wing. That's a hoax. Russia Russia Russia. Russia is the most innocent country in the world. And you're going to get like, nuclear blasts of right wing lunacy anytime the word Russia is mentioned. So they probably figured, oh, we're safe. We can just take anything we want from the Russians. [00:13:59] And if anybody criticizes us, we'll say Russia, Russia, Russia and yell hoax at the top of our lungs. I'm surprised they're not doing it in this case. Now, finally, the part of the indictment that Jake had referenced, I think it's important for you to know the details about it. And brace for impact as I try again to pronounce a difficult Russian name. [00:14:18] But here's what it says on or about February 15th, 2024. One of the Russians who has been indicted and that's often afanasyeva shared with us company one a video of a well-known US political commentator [00:14:36] visiting a grocery store in Russia. That was the Tucker video, where he visited a grocery store and pretended like, double level grocery store is like this big revolutionary thing that we don't have in the United States, even though we have a lot of those in the United States. But anyway, so, that Russian agent posted the video in the producer discord [00:14:56] channel later that day, producer one privately messaged founder two on discord, saying, quote, they want me to post this referencing the video, but it just feels like overt shilling. Founder two replied that founder one thinks we should put it out there [00:15:13] Producer one acquiesced, Responding. All right, I'll put it out tomorrow. So that's kind of how the pressure to publish certain things kind of worked out. It wasn't like overt pressure, but it was. No, I think this is good. I think you should post this, that kind of, you know, encouragement. [00:15:31] Yeah. Here's the encouragement. You're going to get $100,000 when you post that video. That's all the encouragement you need. And so look, if you wonder, hey, this weirdo Tucker Carlson video of in a Russian grocery store telling us how the Russians are so much better off than Americans, [00:15:48] and we should be more like the Russians. Why is that everywhere? Well, this is part of the reason why it's everywhere. Because they're telling people, hey, get that out there. Tell everybody that the Russians are the best and America sucks. And they're like, oh, I'm getting paid $100,000. Oh, yeah. Oh, look at that. The Russian grocery stores are the best. [00:16:03] Look at Tucker Carlson telling us how great they are. The Ukrainians suck and America sucks. And we got to make it great again because America is so bad. But Russian grocery store. They're amazing. Give me the check. Give me the check. Keep it real. You didn't know. You didn't know. Okay, guys, one last thing. So it's not like the videos were like, hey, here's one on the Philippines, [00:16:22] here's one on Brazil, here's one on Russia, here's one on health care, here's one on gun control, etc.. No, they were all pro-Russian, Anti-ukrainian pro-Trump, by the way. So you couldn't put two and two together. [00:16:39] That was a giant mystery to you. And you're the victims? No. Brothers and sisters. You got $100,000 a video. You ain't no goddamn victim. The final thing I'll say is, look, guys, this isn't just damaging for the reputations of the individuals involved. This is damaging for anyone who has an opinion that goes against the grain, [00:16:59] especially as it pertains to the ongoing war in Ukraine and whether or not the US is really helping or hurting in that effort. So if you have problems with how that war is being carried out, well, now you're just automatically going to be assumed to be like some sort [00:17:14] of Russian agent when you might have legitimate, sincere opinions on that. That might align to some extent with what someone like Tim Pool would say about it, right? The other thing is, you know, Lauren Chen has been drawing a lot of attention to AIPAC and the Israel lobby. [00:17:33] So now the Israel Defenders are going after anyone who speaks out against AIPAC and accusing them of being foreign agents. So this kind of behavior is, first of all, I mean, I'm disgusted with any foreign [00:17:48] government trying to have any influence over our media or our political system. I don't care what the country is. Period. But it's also going to have a destructive impact on people's ability to speak freely and honestly about their analysis on incredibly important political issues. [00:18:07] Yeah. Look, last thing I'll say, number one, we're consistent here. So I don't like AIPAC buying American politicians on behalf of Israel. I hate it. And if you think it's not happening, you're being ridiculous. Oh, yeah. Joe Biden is just a natural born Zionist. [00:18:24] Not because he got over $11 million from AIPAC. Okay, you can tell that story to anyone you like. But you know what? When you look at it that way, Joe Biden is Tim Poole on steroids. Oh, I know that you catch feelings over that one. Right? But is Israel a foreign government or isn't it? Was he paid over $11 million to support a foreign government or wasn't he? [00:18:42] He was. Maybe he was paid by Americans, but he was still paid to support a foreign government, which he has religiously done throughout his entire career. So at the same time, you shouldn't take money from the Russians and pretend you're being honest on air. And for all the folks who couldn't tell who was telling the truth [00:18:59] and who wasn't between us and Dave Rubin, I think you have your answer. Hey, thanks for watching the video. We really appreciate it, guys, and we appreciate it if you become members, because that allows us to be independent, honest, progressive, all the things that you don't get from corporate media and all of that is because of you guys. [00:19:15] Hit the join button below and become one of us. Become a young Turk.