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 Wednesday, the Department of Justice revealed an indictment tracing Russian state media payments to American influencers with millions of followers on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, and YouTube, including well-known rightwing 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 rightwing influencers into flooding U.S.-based internet platforms with Russian-crafted disinformation. The indictment alleges that from October 2023 through August 2024, Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled TV network, sent nearly $10 million in wire transfers to a Tennessee-based online content creation company widely presumed to be Tenet Media, which in turn channeled payment to the influencers.
The indictment suggests the influencers were duped by Russia into spreading American political division by 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 how currencies work. (Hint: Russia’s economy, where the average monthly income is the equivalent of $182, would price groceries significantly lower than the US, regardless of who is in the White House.)
At least one of the Republican shill-for-hires had a clue, complaining that the Carlson video “just feels like overt shilling,” but apparently, $400,000 a month was enough to assuage his qualms.
The indictment identifies six right-wing influencers caught up in the scheme, without accusing Pool, Rubin, Johnson, or the other three of wrongdoing. It remains to be seen whether they will return the payments now that they know that Putin and RT played them for fools; to date,
being useful idiots is not a crime.
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 the foreign principal. More importantly, 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.
None of the podcasts, tweets, videos or editorials repeating Trump talking points about how the U.S. is a hellhole overrun with criminals, that immigrants are voting en masse, and that blue states allow the murder of babies after they are born, included any such disclaimer.
In addition to the six influencers who promoted Russia’s propaganda on their platforms, 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.”
This is but the latest episode where authoritarian regimes with state-controlled media — where truth is irrelevant to what the government reports- abuse America’s First Amendment to advance their own interests. As Garland explained in a news release, FARA was enacted nearly a century ago to ensure that the American people know when a foreign power “is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda.”
The Kremlin, like Trump and his oligarchs, have a strong interest in exacerbating U.S. domestic divisions. Divided populations are easier to manipulate and dominate, and absurd culture wars make a great distraction. Given that RT’s editor-in-chief admitted that the company has built an “entire empire of covert projects” designed to shape public opinion in “Western audiences,” said “Western audiences” should be made aware of what RT is up to.
Millions of followers of right-wing influencers should also be informed that hateful online rhetoric attacking the U.S. 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.