Following the Biden administration’s accusations that Russia is waging an ongoing campaign to influence the outcome of November’s presidential election, several prominent conservative influencers in the US have come forward to claim they are “victims” of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson issued a statement on Wednesday evening regarding allegations that a U.S. content production company they worked for received nearly $10 million from employees of Russian state media to publish videos containing messages supporting Moscow’s interests and policies, including the war in Ukraine.
The Justice Department indictment does not name the company but describes it as a Tennessee-based content production company that features six commentators and operates a website that describes itself as “a network of unorthodox commentators focused on Western political and cultural issues.”
That description neatly fits with Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos created by well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.
The Guardian has contacted Tenet for comment. The company has reportedly not issued a statement or commented on the allegations, nor has it responded to requests for comment from other media outlets, including The New York Times and CBS.
Tenet Media’s programming in recent months has featured prominent conservative guests, including Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Republican Senate candidate Kali Lake.
“The company never disclosed its ties to RT or the Russian government to its influencers or their millions of followers,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland, who called Wednesday’s indictment the most sweeping effort yet to combat an alleged Russian effort to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.
According to the indictment, the Tennessee-based company published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.
“If these allegations are true, then I, and other personalities and commentators, have been deceived and are victims,” said Poole, a popular podcaster with more than 2 million followers on X.
“No one other than me has ever had full editorial control of the show, and the content of the show is generally apolitical.”
“I am disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment that make it clear that I and other influencers were victims of this alleged scheme,” Johnson, who has 2.7 million followers on X, said in a statement.
Rubin said on X that he had “no knowledge whatsoever of this fraud” and that the allegations “indicate that I and other commenters were victims of this scheme.”
The Justice Department has accused two employees of Russian state media outlet RT of secretly paying a Tennessee-based content company to publish videos favorable to Russia. The company did not disclose that it received funding from RT, and neither it nor its founders registered as agents of a foreign entity, as required by law, according to the Justice Department.
RT stopped broadcasting in the United States after major TV networks terminated their contracts following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to a Reuters request for comment, RT derisively replied: “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections.”
“The Department of Justice’s message is clear: We will never tolerate attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic political institutions,” Garland said.
The roughly 2,000 videos it posted have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said. The indictment said the company paid $8.7 million to the production companies that produced the three internet stars it recruited.
The Justice Department said the commentators, who are not named in the indictment, were unaware that they were receiving payments from RT.
In one instance, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, an RT employee asked the company to produce a video blaming Ukraine and the United States for a mass shooting at a Moscow music venue, even though the Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack. One of the company’s founders responded that one of its commentators was “happy to cover it,” according to the indictment.
As part of the indictment, the Biden administration seized a Kremlin-run website and charged two Russian state media officials, in its most extensive effort yet to counter what it says is a Russian effort to spread disinformation ahead of the November presidential election.
The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, and nine other employees of the network for their role in spreading disinformation around the election, saying Simonyan was “a central figure in the Russian government’s malign influence campaign.”
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.