DOJ Alleges Right-Wing Commentator KNEW Content Was Funded By Russians

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 uh essentially used prominent right-wing content creators here in the United States to unwittingly spread pro-russian propaganda but one person didn't do so unwittingly and that was the co-founder of tenant Lauren Chen the other co-founder is actually her husband so uh the indictment didn't list their names and I want to be clear that Lauren Chan 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 uh Lauren Chen and her husband seemed to know uh that the money was coming from Russia and uh they went to some lengths to basically conceal that fact uh from the Contex creators even fabricating a person out of whole cloth uh so let's get into those details actually before we do Jen we covered this story yesterday when you were out 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 so I on a personal level I I wish this story uh 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 okay now if we were paid $100,000 per video we'd never have to ask you for another dime again okay be because that's not the economics of digital media so uh some of the videos would get 8,000 views that's like 50 bucks man so then they ask okay who's giving the money and they claim oh it is just a wealthy businessman and they make up a name you didn't Google the guy's because if you Googled you'd know that he doesn't exist so you never even bother to ask they're getting 400,000 a month for just four videos 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 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 G no sorry but I don't believe you at all so look the content creators uh Tim P Betty Johnson Dave Rubin there were others but those are some of the more prominent names uh according to the indictment didn't know uh where the s of the money was coming from uh and that they were lied to uh by tenant media and a lot of the details of what was going on was intentionally concealed uh 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 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 uh alerted Dave Rubin to potential red flags was that uh I guess social justice was mentioned in the resum and he's like um social justice I don't know about that but uh 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 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 and then they tell you to say ridiculous things in favor of Russia and I mean there 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 say in that indictment and uh and they go shut up and say it 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 at a bare minimum you didn't look into it at all cuz you didn't want to know why didn't you want to know because you had an excellent idea where that 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 tyt you power our honest reporting you do it at tyt.com team and we love you for it so we're going to show you uh the very part of the indictment that Jen is referring to uh but let's get into the founders of tenant media which was at the center of this whole influence scheme influence pedaling 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 us company ones that's tenets uh true source of funding including from the company's own Talent which includes Tim P Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin now altogether tenant media took in nearly $10 million from the Russians to carry out this influence campaign in the United States and uh if you're wondering okay how was the money divvied up about 8 million went toward the content creators and when it comes to Lauren Chen and her husband uh they took about 700,000 nearly a million dollars of that money for themselves but the real money makers here were the content creators who according to the indictment were unwitting uh unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda okay so let's take a look at the portions of the indictment that I think are interesting here so uh the indictment says describe desing us company 1's investor to commentator 1 and commentator 2 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 the same term uh 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 uh beginning in 2021 that's just a a bit of information to know about on or about May 27th 2023 founder one messaged founder two on Discord quote I'm gonna ask the Russians about hiring producer 2 this coming week approximately two days later founder one messaged producer 2 on Discord here's a list of responsibilities I sent over to the investors to approve bringing you on waiting to hear back on timelines SL salary uh on or about August 8th of 2023 uh per Persona one informed founder one and founder two in Discord that the request to hire a producer Booker was approved so I give you that portion of the uh indictment to show you that they would just kind of refer to the you know the source of the funding as investor our investor and Jen to your point I totally agree that it's like hard to believe that any content creator certainly a content creator like Tim P 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 there's like a you know benevolent investor who's not you know trying to influence pedal in the United States but you also have to remember that on the right wi there's all sorts of billionaires who just give money to Media Outlets uh to regurgitate the message 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 and by the way I should also note that RT had previously been sanctioned by the federal government uh and so RT knew that they couldn't just influence pedal under their own name so this was kind of a roundabout way of doing it yeah so look I this is this story is super frustrating because I want 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 um there's a in the right-wing media ecosystem there's so much money and people get paid by fracking uh company Founders and heirs to the fortunes of different uh you know Banks and railroad companies and oil companies left over Etc right there's just so much Matt Sheffield who used to work here uh 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 the biggest difference between the right and the left is in the right wing there's so 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 it's filled to the room with propaganda on the left there's none of that so he comes over 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 mic atten well all like dozens of companies have gone bankrupt 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 pain job at Riot media that has nothing to do with politics I go great fantastic good luck Dave appreciate it Etc we're on great terms all of a sudden he takes this massive turn to the right 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 mashion 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 you it's like shopping for which funer you would like whose 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 is Tut tutting well okay you guys take $17 billion uh from politicians 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 but that's why that right-wing media ecosystem being 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 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 like 18 views on something you begin to get a sense that somebody's funding that okay so two more uh parts of the indictment that I want to read to you uh so let's go to graphic four here where the indictment States uh on or about May 12th of 2021 founder 2 message founder one on Discord quote so we're billing the Russians from the corporation right like honestly Jen 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 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 um 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 uh 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 okay but that it is what it is no look an my two thoughts on that one is you know yesterday we were getting it from Exxon Mobile 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 to happen with the rightwing it's a HW Russia Russia Russia Russia's the most innocent country in the world and you're going to get like nuclear blasts of right-wing lunacy anytime the word Russia's mentioned so they probably figured oh we're safe we could just take anything we want from the Russians and if anybody criticizes us we'll say Russia Russia Russia and yell hoax at the top of our uh lungs I'm surprised they're not doing it in this case now finally the part of the indictment that Jen had referenced I think it's important for you to know the details about it and um brace for impact as I try again to pronounce a difficult Russian name but here's what it says on or about February 15 2024 one of the Russians who has been indicted and that's aen afanaseva uh uh shared with us company 1 a video of a well-known us political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia that was the tucker video where he visited a grocery store and pretended like a 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 uh that Russian agent posted the video in the producer Discord Channel later that day producer one privately messaged founder 2 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 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 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 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 that America sucks and they're like oh I'm getting paid $100,000 oh yeah oh look at that the Russian grocery stories are the best look at tuer Carlson telling us how great they are and the ukrainians suck and America sucks and we got to make it great again because America's 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 here's one on Brazil here's one on Russia here's one on healthc Care here's one on uh gun control Etc no they were all pro-russian anti-ukrainian prot Trump by the way so you couldn't put two and two together 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 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 of Russian agent when you might have legitimate sincere opinions on that uh that might align to some extent with what uh someone like Tim P would say about it right the other thing is you know Lauren Chen has been drawing a lot of attention to APAC and the Israel Lobby so now the Israel Defenders are going after anyone who speaks out against APAC and accusing them of being foreign agents so this kind of behavior is first of all I mean I'm disgusted with any foreign government trying to have any influence over our media or our political system I don't care what the country is period but it 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 yeah look last things I'll say uh number one um we're consistent here uh so I don't like APAC 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 not because he got over $1 million from APAC okay you could tell that story to anyone you like but you know what when you look at it that way Joe Biden is Tim p on steroids oh I know you catch feelings over that one right but is Israel a foreign government or isn't it was he paid over $1 million to support a foreign government or wasn't he 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 hell who was telling the truth 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 that is because of you guys hit the join button below and become one of us become a Young Turk [Music]