How Russian operatives covertly hired U.S. influencers to create viral videos

Federal officials have accused Russia of using unwitting right-wing American influencers in its quest to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department charged two employees of RT, the Russian state media broadcaster, in a scheme to secretly fund and direct the production of social media videos that racked up millions of views.

The RT staffers, named in the indictment as Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They’re accused of funneling nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company that contracted with online influencers with big audiences.

“The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.

Details in the indictment match Nashville-based Tenet Media, including its website description: “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

Tenet was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen, a conservative Canadian YouTuber, and her husband, Liam Donovan, whose X profile describes him as president of Tenet Media. Chen hosts a show on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and is a contributor to right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. She wrote opinion pieces for RT in 2021 and 2022.

According to the indictment, the Tennessee company’s founders worked with Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva — whom they knew were Russian — to recruit influencers to make videos that were published across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X. The indictment says its nearly 2,000 YouTube videos amassed more than 16 million views, which tracks with public statistics on Tenet Media’s YouTube channel.

Chen and Donovan didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva come as U.S. intelligence officials say foreign efforts aimed at swaying the outcome of the election are escalating. On Wednesday, the government seized 32 internet domains connected to a separate Russian influence operation, while Iran has recently been accused of trying to hack both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.

What sets the RT operation apart from many other interference efforts is that it appeared to reach a real audience, thanks to the recognizable names attached.

“Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” wrote Renée DiResta, the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, about how online influencers spread propaganda and rumors, in a post on Threads.

A fictional funder and lucrative contracts

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many American cable distributors dropped RT’s U.S channel, RT America, from their lineups, and it eventually shut down production. The video scheme allowed RT to covertly reach American audiences without a presence on the airwaves, the indictment alleged.

Tenet publicly launched in November 2023 with six contributors well-known in right-wing media, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, David Rubin, and Lauren Southern. The videos they create for Tenet regularly cover conservative staples including “migrant gangs,” transgender people, online censorship, and attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.

“While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine,” the indictment said.

The indictment accuses Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva of working with the Tennessee company’s founders to conceal the true origins of its funding. They told some contributors that the company was being backed by a wealthy European banker named Eduard Grigoriann. “In truth and in fact, Grigoriann was a fictional persona,” the indictment said.

The influencers were unaware of the project’s Russian connections. On Wednesday, Johnson, Pool and Rubin posted statements on X describing themselves as victims. Southern didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived,” Pool wrote.

“I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period,” wrote Rubin.

Johnson said he had been pitched by a “media startup” and had “negotiated a standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.” His most recent video on Tenet Media’s YouTube channel is from August 29th.

The Tennessee company offered lucrative terms, according to the indictment. One influencer was paid $400,000 a month, a $100,000 signing bonus, and an additional performance bonus in exchange for four videos a week.

Afanasyeva allegedly exerted a lot of control over the Tennessee company’s operations and what it put out, including pushing for specific angles that echoed Kremlin narratives.

For example, the indictment said Afanasyeva told the company to blame Ukraine for a March 2024 terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility. The company’s founder said one of the contributors was “happy to cover it.”

Afanasyeva also allegedly requested the company post a video of “a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia” — likely a reference to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Moscow in February. According to the indictment, a producer at the company told one of the founders “it just feels like overt shilling,” but was told to “put it out there.”

Afanasyeva also urged the influencers to share the company’s videos on their own channels, and got annoyed when she didn’t think they were promoting them enough, according to the indictment.

Some of the Tenet Media contributors pushed back against the idea that any outside forces had shaped their work.

“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,” Pool wrote. “The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company.”

“There was no influence exerted over me in that way. There’s no change in my perspective or the nature of my content,” said Matt Christiansen, another Tenet Media contributor, in a livestream on Wednesday evening. “How am I unwittingly duped into saying someone else’s words when I wrote every one of them?”