The U.S. Justice Department revealed a Russian influence campaign and charged two RT employees with two counts of conspiracy in an unsealed indictment on Wednesday. According to the indictment, two employees of the Kremlin-run media company RT spent $10 million on right-wing media personalities and poisoning the well of American discourse.
The two Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva funneled money into a Tennessee-based media company to get the job done. The indictment doesn’t name the company or the media personalities it hired, but it’s not hard to use clues in the court documents to figure out everyone involved. The unsealed indictment quotes the company’s description of itself on its own website as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”
There’s only one company based in Tennessee with that phrase on its website: TENET Media. TENET Media is an outlet that publishes on YouTube and other social media. It has paid for videos from people like Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, Matt Christiansen, and Lauren Southern.
What kind of content did Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva get for their $10 million? “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
The most watched video on TENET Media’s YouTube channel is a documentary from Southern about online dating. The second most popular is Southern talking about the great replacement conspiracy theory. Its most recent video is a 12-minute long low-effort rant from Benny Johnson about Kamala Harris. So far it has less than five thousand views.
According to the indictment, Pool, Johnson, and the rest were making decent money churning out content for the site. In 2022, Tenet went looking for people to be the face of the operation. “‘For the right candidate we’re willing to pay around $1-2 million per year,’” they said, according to court records. That’s a lot of cash for videos that would go on to routinely net under ten thousand views.
The founders reached out to two commentators—believed to be Tim Pool and either Benny Johnson or David Rubin—and asked them how much they’d need to come work for them. “Founder-I advised that Commentator-I said ‘it would need to be closer to 5 million yearly for him to be interested,’ and that Commentator-2 said ‘it would take 100k per weekly episode to make it worth his while,’” the indictment said.
The indictment made clear that Pool, Rubin, Johnson, and the rest didn’t know that they were being sponsored by the Russians. The three have all released statements in the past 24 hours claiming that they, themselves, were victims.
“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 said in a post on X.
“These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme,” Rubin said on X. “I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period.”
Pool emphasized that the charges are allegations and, like the others, said he was a victim. “That being said, we still do not know what is true as these are only allegations,” Pool said in a post on X. “Putin is a scumbag, Russia sucks donkey balls.” He later deleted the post. Pool has been vocal in opposing U.S. support for Ukraine.
According to the indictment, all three men made hundreds of thousands of dollars making videos for TENET media. One creator made $400,000 a month on top of a $100,000 signing bonus. Again, that’s a lot of cash for videos no one was watching.
The unsealed indictment was just one of several coordinated announcements from Washington on Wednesday aimed at striking back against Russia for election interference. The Treasury said it would sanction 10 individuals and two entities as part of the effort. In addition to the indictment, the DoJ announced the seizure of 32 internet domains it said spread disinformation using AI.
Disinformation campaigns are a staple of modern geopolitics. Countries like the U.S., China, Russia, and Iran all spend money manipulating the media of their friends and rivals. In February of this year, Reuters reported that the U.S. military spread anti-vax propaganda in the Philippines during the pandemic with the goal of undermining China. Earlier this month, Microsoft accused Iran of running disinformation campaigns in the U.S.
Disinformation campaigns are not always subtle and, if discovered, can undermine the intended message. Modern Russian campaigns are odd though, they’re often designed with the knowledge that they’ll be discovered. Russia isn’t always interested in convincing people of any one thing, it’s more about making everyone paranoid and distrustful. The knowledge that RT, and by extension the Kremlin, paid for Pool, Johnson, and Rubin to make videos is destabilizing in itself, regardless of the content they generate.
Reuters reached out to RT for comment on the indictment and RT gave them a statement that can be read as both a flippant joke and bizarre promise. “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and RT’s interference in the US elections,” RT told Reuters.
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