A Russian cybercriminal group has paid influencers for election influence. The United States is preparing to block Russian propaganda with drastic means.
News channel CNN tells The US Treasury has imposed sanctions on ten people who are said to have worked in Russian influence operations.
According to the news agency Reuters, two of them are suspected of having paid ten million dollars for the production of online videos to Tennessee-based Tenet Media with the help of front companies and false identities.
The channel produces conservative content on YouTube. Now its three popular content producers say they were victims of alleged Russian propaganda.
Tenet Media’s content producers Tim Poole, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson are right-wing influencers with millions of followers.
Visibility by millions
Russia has tried in many ways to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in November and at the same time spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine.
The US Department of Justice has accused Russia of influencing the election due to the Tenet Media case.
Pool, Rubin and Johnson asserted their ignorance of Russia connections on Wednesday on the X messaging service.
– If these allegations are proved to be true, I and my colleagues have been misled and we are victims, Pool wrote in defense.
The defendants are not the channel’s presenters, but the managers of Tenet Media Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan.
Their be blamed having accepted money offered by a Russian company for content production. The agreed amount of money was $400,000 per month, plus they received a $100,000 bonus. The sum was supposed to produce four videos a week at Tenet Media, reports CNN.
Pro-Russian propaganda
According to the US Department of Justice, the goal of the Russian disinformation operation is to publish pro-Russian content and news articles favoring the Republican presidential candidate through influencers Donald Trump as well as other politicians whom the Kremlin believes understand its interests.
The Russian operation has, among other things, spread false stories invented by artificial intelligence on social media.
– The Ministry of Justice will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s freedom of speech to promote its own secret propaganda efforts, the US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the ministry in the bulletin.
The United States Department of Justice announced that it has closed more than 30 domain names that have been used in Russian influence operations. According to the ministry, the domain names have operated under the Russian presidential administration.
One of the most influential figures in the Russian propaganda machine is the editor-in-chief of the RT channel Margarita Simonyan.
In addition, the US Department of State has prescribed visa restrictions for employees of Russian state media such as RT, Ria Novosti, Sputnik and Ruptly.
United States promise to pay reward for information about a Russian cybercriminal group. Depending on the information, the reward can be up to 10 million dollars.
Putin reacted jokingly
President of Russia Vladimir Putin has dismissed US claims of election influence by joking.
Putin ironically stated that he hopes for the Democratic candidate Horrible Harris to win the election, because Harris’s laugh is so “infectious”, reports the Reuters news agency.
Donald Trump has also mocked Harris’ laughter in the past and has used it as an election weapon to brand him as crazy.
CNN says he got it from the Russian propaganda channel RT, a response to his request for comments, in which the allegations of election influence are dismissed. RT write “ha ha ha ha!”, and “2016 called and demanded all their tired clichés back”.
For Reuters, the Russian state news channel RT wrote: “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s meddling in the US election.”