The U.S. State department issued an indictment accusing the Kremlin of funneling $10 million to an unidentified U.S. media company, which is widely understood to be Tenet Media, a far-right podcasting platform. One of the podcasters accused of being on Russia's payroll is Tim Pool, a podcaster with more than 2 million followers on Xitter.
Pool denies having any knowledge of Russia being the source of his income, claiming he was never instructed by anyone to say anything on his podcast.
Take a look at this recent Pool podcast and decide for yourself:
"Ukraine is the enemy of this country! Ukraine is our enemy, being funded by the Democrats. I will stress this again. One of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine.
"They are expanding this war — now don't get me wrong, I know. You've got criminal elements of the U.S. government pushing them and guiding them and telling them what to do. Ukraine is now accused, a German warrant issued, for blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline — triggering this conflict.
"Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologize to Russia."
After the DOJ released the indictment, Pool xitted a statement claiming the DOJ indictment was a "leak."
My statement regarding allegations and the leaked DOJ Indictment
Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed
He soon deleted the tweet. He really is a total moron, so maybe he didn't know anything, but it sounds like Tenet's founders did:
From Wired:
The indictment claims that the founders were aware they were working with Russian nationals and did not register with the US attorney general "as an agent of a foreign principal, as required by law." For example, the indictment claims the founders referred to the RT employees as "the Russians" in private messages with each other. When the company's fake backer, "Eduard Grigoriann," did not reply to a message about money, one of the founders allegedly Googled "time in Moscow." One of the founders also allegedly worked directly with RT and its German subsidiary.
From The Tennessean:
It appears Tenet Media was created by Lauren Chen, a Canadian-born YouTuber and blogger, and a man named Liam Donovan, who appears to be her husband, based on information from several sources. Donovan identifies himself as the president of Tenet Media in his bio on X and as Chen's husband in his bio on Instagram.
