Foreign authoritarian regimes seeking to harm the United States do not enjoy First Amendment protection for their online propaganda, so they target domestic influencers who do.
On Sept. 4, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment tracing Russian state media payments to American influencers with millions of followers on TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube, including well-known right-wing personalities Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson.
In the federal court for the Southern District of New York, Attorney General Merrick Garland identified Russian agents who duped these right-wing influencers into flooding U.S.-based internet platforms with Russia-supported disinformation. The indictment alleges that from October 2023 through August 2024, Russia Today sent nearly $10 million dollars in wire transfers to a Tennessee-based online content creation company widely presumed to be Tenet Media, which in turn paid as much as $400,000 a month to each influencer.
The indictment says the influencers were duped by Russian agents to encourage American political division, using fear, culture wars, immigration, and inflation as standard provocations. One paragraph describes how Russian agents directed the influencers to promote the video of Tucker Carlson’s Russian grocery store propaganda, the one where Carlson demonstrated shocking ignorance of currencies. (Hint: Russia, with an equalized monthly income of US $182, would price groceries significantly lower than the US regardless of who is in the White House.) At least one of the influencers had a clue, complaining that the Carlson video “just feels like overt shilling,” but apparently, $400k a month was enough to assuage his qualms.
Foreign Agents are Required to Register
The Foreign Agents Registration Act ("FARA"), 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq., is a registration and disclosure statute that requires any person acting in the United States as "an agent of a foreign principal" to register with the Attorney General if he is engaging, directly or through another person, in certain types of conduct to advance the interest of a foreign principal. Propaganda transmitted within the United States is required by law to include a conspicuous statement disclosing that the materials are distributed on behalf of a foreign principal. (How Fox News evades propaganda labeling is beyond the scope of this editorial.)
None of the podcasts, tweets, videos or editorials repeating Donald Trump talking points about how the U.S. is a hellhole overrun with criminals, that immigrants are voting en masse, and that blue states abort babies after they are born included any such disclaimer.
In addition to the six influencers who promoted Russia’s propaganda on their platforms over the past year, the indictment identifies 32 internet domains the Russians built to look like legitimate U.S. news organizations, relaying Russian disinformation meant to divide the country and influence voters to support Trump in the 2024 election. According to the indictment, “For nearly two decades, RT has promoted the objectives of the Government of Russia by publishing disinformation and propaganda, leveraging its international network to amplify the Government of Russia's message to foreign audiences, and using its guise as a conventional media outlet to lend credibility to that message.”
Useful Idiots, All of Them
This is just the latest episode where Putin’s intelligence and state media are exploiting America’s social media and free exchange of ideas platforms. They also seem to keep duping Republicans to act as their mouthpieces, perhaps unwittingly, but perhaps not. These mouthpieces should be warned that Putin’s regime is dangerous. He is not playing. Putin murders people for criticizing him with reliable frequency; if he’s touching your personal bank account, he’s dangerously close.
The Kremlin, like Trump and his oligarchs, share a common interest in exacerbating U.S. domestic divisions and culture wars. Divided populations are weaker, prone to manipulation and easier to dominate. Grotesquely rich broligarchs like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel hope to supplant democratic norms with oligarchy, where corporations wield political control. They back Trump to wipe out expensive safety regulations they loathe, and to cut corporate and personal wealth taxes.
Millions of right-wing viewers and listeners should be informed that the hateful online rhetoric they so enjoy may be coming from inside the house, but it’s manufactured in Russia.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
