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A Russian state media company covertly paid a group of influential far-right pundits, including high-profile anti-LGBTQ+ hosts Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, to spread propaganda and pro-Russia talking points in the U.S., according to a bombshell indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice released Wednesday.
The indictment alleges that RT, formerly Russia Today — a state-owned media company frequently accused of spreading propaganda and disinformation that was dropped from many U.S. platforms following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — paid the founders of a U.S.-based company called Tenet Media nearly $10 million to create and distribute numerous videos that align with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policies.
Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, two RT employees, both face charges of money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires individuals and companies to disclose their relationships with foreign agents when engaging in political activities.
Tenet Media was founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who allegedly knew and acknowledged to each other that they were funded by “the Russians,” but did not disclose their relationship with the RT operatives as required by U.S. law, according to the indictment. Since then, the platform has carved out a comfortable niche in the far-right media landscape, frequently posting videos that demonize LGBTQ+ people, push “anti-woke” talking points, and falsely claim there is a “migrant crisis” in the U.S. Tenet itself is not referred to by name in the indictment, but “Company 1” is said to describe itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” — a phrase which precisely matches text on Tenet’s website. (CNN independently confirmed that Tenet was the target of the indictment on Wednesday.)
Likewise, the indictment does not name specific pundits who served as mouthpieces for the scheme, but provides some identifying information. “Commentator-1” and “Commentator-2,” both early hires for Tenet, are said to have YouTube followers totaling roughly 2.4 million and 1.3 million respectively. Those numbers precisely match the public follower counts for Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, two of Tenet’s highest-profile hosts. Other Tenet ideologues include Lauren Southern, Benny Johnson, and Matt Christiansen.
But the indictment stops short of implicating the hosts themselves in the scheme. According to the indictment, Tenet personalities were told they were being bankrolled by “Eduard Grigoriann,” a fake “finance entrepreneur” and one of several invented personas allegedly used by Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva to gain Tenet’s trust. In May 2023, Rubin allegedly requested more information about “Grigoriann” before joining Tenet, and was provided a false résumé that claimed the nonexistent businessman had formerly worked at numerous European banks. Rubin later signed a contract with Tenet for $400,000 per month, plus a $100,000 signing bonus and additional performance bonuses.
Pool, meanwhile, was paid $100,000 through the RT operatives for his weekly livestream show, “The Culture War Podcast,” according to the indictment. Once known as a citizen journalist for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests, Pool has since become a darling of the right-wing grifter set, railing at length against “gender ideology” and the Biden-Harris administration. Most recently, Pool has become infamous in the small West Virginia town of Martinsburg for buying a local skate park from under the wheels of its frequenters, to the tune of $850,000.
The indictment does not mention the anti-LGBTQ+ content posted through Tenet channels, although such rhetoric — especially, but not exclusively, targeting transgender people — has become a major part of Putin’s regime over the past decade. It does identify some specific instances of RT’s attempts to propagandize U.S. voters on other topics, however. In February 2024, the RT operatives allegedly instructed Tenet to post a video of “a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia,” likely referring to Tucker Carlson’s much-derided trip to Moscow, which chat logs indicate Tenet did promote. The next month, in March 2024, the operatives allegedly asked Tenet to produce videos on a mass shooting in Moscow that would place blame on Ukraine instead of the extremist group ISIS, which claimed responsibility. That framing, spread by Putin himself, was relayed to “Commentator-3,” who said he was “happy to cover it,” the indictment claims.
Attorney General Merrick Garland accused RT and its agents of attempting to influence U.S. elections in a statement accompanying the indictment Wednesday. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing,” Garland wrote.
Rubin, Pool, and others quickly issued statements on Wednesday casting themselves as victims in RT’s scheme. On X, formerly Twitter, Pool wrote that he and his fellow pundits “were deceived and are victims” in the scheme, but simultaneously asserted that Tenet had no impact on the content of “The Culture War.” Pool, who had to repost his statement after falsely claiming the indictment was “leaked” from the DOJ, further called Putin a “scumbag” and told journalists reporting on the story to “eat [his] irish ass.” Rubin displayed more brevity, writing that he “knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity” and that his show was only “a silly show covering viral videos” which ended earlier this year.
The Kremlin has rejected all allegations against RT, and vowed that “retaliatory measures against the American media” would be justified as a result of the indictment in remarks to the international press on Thursday.
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