Is This Russian Election Interference Scheme Paying a Pro-Trump Firm?

Russian agents have allegedly been spreading disinformation through a right-wing U.S. media company that houses a few popular MAGA commentators. 

The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment Wednesday against two Russia Today employees, Elena Afanasyeva and Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, alleging that the two had illegally acted as foreign agents and funneled roughly $10 million into a U.S. media company to produce propaganda that aligned with the Russian government’s interests. 

“While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine,” the indictment said.  

The Tennessee-based media company has posted nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, according to the indictment. The U.S. company failed to disclose to its viewers that it was being funded and directed by R.T., which has been banned in the U.K., EU, and Canada. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in November 2022, R.T. suspended its activities in the United States, as well.

The indictment doesn’t say the name of the U.S. media company that is responsible for producing Russian propaganda—but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. The indictment says the company is registered in Tennessee and describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

As Aric Toler and Alan Feuer of The New York Times pointed out on X, there is only one company that fits this description: Tenet Media, a hub of six pro-Trump far-right commentators, including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson. 

Earlier this summer, Pool attacked Kamala Harris by calling her a “Communazi Despot come to put conservatives in concentration camps.” The attack was so over the top that it even drew a reply from white nationalist Richard Spencer, who wondered, “A bit much?”

In addition to MAGA acolytes, it looks like the group members were also—likely unwittingly—Russian propagandists. Maybe they’ll add that to their résumés as they search for new jobs? 

The indictment alleges that Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov worked together to “deceive” two of the company’s commentators “who respectively have over 2.4 million and 1.3 million YouTube subscribers.” The commentators mentioned are likely to be Rubin and Pool, respectively, based on their follower counts. 

The indictment also lists two “founders” who were made to act as foreign agents, though their names are not listed in the indictment. To hide where the money was coming from, the founders allegedly invented a private investor named Eduard Grigoriann who was sponsoring their work.*

Tenet Media is owned by conservative host Lauren Chen, a contributor to Turning Point USA, which is helping Donald Trump out with his presidential campaign, and her husband Liam Donovan. 

According to the indictment, Afanasyeva pushed for content to be covered from an angle that was beneficial to Russia. After a bombing in Moscow in March, for which ISIS admitted responsibility, Afanasyeva directed one of the Tenet founders to have a commentator to “focus on the Ukraine/U.S. angle” and claim that “mainstream media spread fake news that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack yet ISIS itself never made such statements” and saying it was “suspicious” that the attackers had fled toward the Ukrainian border. 

In February, Afanasyeva shared a video of “a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia” to be posted to the site. One producer remarked in the Discord chat that “it just feels like overt shilling” but, after urging from one of the founders, did it anyway. 

In June, one of the founders gave Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov permission to post their own content directly onto the company’s channels, according to the indictment. 

Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov have been charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

* This story originally misstated who invented the private investor.

It’s 61 days out until the election, and conservatives seem to be Harris-curious.

On Wednesday, Fox Business host Stuart Varney interrupted RNC Co-Chair Michael Whatley in order to highlight the significance of one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tax policies.

“I just want to press the point, when a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea,” Varney said. “And a $50,000 tax cut—not tax cut but tax credit—for small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I gotta say that is a good idea. Regardless of her other tax ideas.”

That seemed to get Whatley’s attention.

“While that may be a good idea, it’s hard to see how she’s going to move forward with it, and she’s certainly not going to reduce red tape,” Whatley speculated.

Harris is expected to roll out her new tax plan at a New Hampshire campaign event on Wednesday. The $50,000 allotment would be 10 times the current allowable deduction. Under the new guidelines, small businesses could spread the deduction over several years or postpone it until they turn a profit, an unidentified Harris staffer told NBC News. The initiative would also aim to erase some of the bureaucracy surrounding small businesses, including by reducing barriers for occupational licenses and creating a standard tax deduction, according to Politico.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has spent much of his campaign focusing on corporate tax cuts and advertising an expansion to his 2017 tax plan, which is set to expire in 2025. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that the proposed $5 trillion in tax cuts under Trump’s plan would benefit the upper class rather than middle or lower-class households, with the vast majority of cuts going to households earning more than $450,000 a year. It would also add significantly to the national deficit and shift the benefit of funding the government to lower-income Americans.

After four people were shot and killed at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, Governor Brian Kemp said he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms.”

But what has the Republican governor done to actually keep Georgia students safe from gun violence? Not a lot. And his critics were quick to point that out.

In 2022, Kemp signed a bill into law that expanded gun rights, allowing Georgians to carry handguns in public without a license or background check. A “lawful weapons carrier,” or any person who is eligible to purchase a firearm, can now concealed-carry a handgun. Long guns could already be carried in many places without a permit.

The governor has previously flagrantly defended his anti–gun control agenda to skeptics. After Georgia’s public media station in 2021 reported that the Giffords Law Center gave Georgia a failing grade on gun control, even before Kemp’s expansion of gun access, Kemp proudly delcared, “I’ll wear this ‘F’ as a badge of honor.”

When he campaigned for governor of Georgia, Kemp ran on expanding access to firearms. This included a nearly unbelievable ad where the then secretary of state sat with a shotgun in his lap, surrounded by even more guns, while speaking to a young boy about dating one of his daughters.

When he isn’t shilling for the gun lobby, Kemp has been keeping busy downplaying Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow Georgia’s election in 2020. Last week, he co-headlined a fundraiser for the former president and convicted felon.

Today’s shooting was the 218th shooting at a K-12 school this year.

Right-wing media have tried to create controversy over a series of Facebook posts from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s brother, but Jeff Walz threw cold water on that effort Tuesday.

In his Facebook posts last week, which were reported on by the New York Post, the older Walz declared he’s “100% opposed to all his ideology,” referring to his brother, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Jeff Walz also replied to another Facebook commentator who urged him to publicly endorse Trump.

“I’ve thought long and hard about doing something like that! I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it,” Walz, a 67-year-old Florida resident, said. “The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”

Jeff Walz donated to Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, and reportedly hasn’t spoken to his brother Tim in eight years, aside from one conversation through their mother last month. But despite his differences with his brother Tim, Walz decided not to dive further into politics, telling NewsNation that the stories were mostly of the embarrassing family nature. He mentioned that Tim was carsick as a child and was prone to throwing up in the car on family trips, with no one wanting to sit beside him. “There’s really nothing else hidden behind there,”  he added.

“I was getting a lot of feedback from my friends, old acquaintances, thinking that I was feeling the same way that my brother did on the issues, and I was trying to clarify that just to friends,” Jeff Walz said to NewsNation. “I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that. But I will say, I don’t agree with his policies.”

“There is going to be no further statements to anybody, and we’re not campaigning or anything for him or against him or anything like that,” Walz added. 

The whole effort seems to be yet another flat GOP effort to smear the Harris-Walz ticket, much like their attacks on Tim Walz’s military service or the bizarre conspiracy theory that he faked his dog Scout’s identity. Perhaps Republicans should be more worried about their own vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, who was easily mocked by the Minnesota governor ordering donuts like a normal person.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social stock has reached a new low, highlighting just how bad things have gotten for the former president and his media company. 

The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group dropped to $17.40 per share on Wednesday, its lowest rate since it hit the market after it merged with a publicly traded shell company in March, when it was valued at a high of $79.38 per share.

Since its stock market debut, the value has dropped more than 70 percent, The New York Times reported.  

Trump’s majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which is roughly 115 million shares, or a 60 percent stake, was once worth a whopping $6 billion. Now it’s worth only $2 billion. 

Since spiking around July 15—the Republican National Convention—the value of Truth Social stock has steadily declined, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Shares of Trump’s media stock have often corresponded with how well investors think Trump’s presidential campaign is going, according to the Times. 

Halfway through August, his stock took a dive after he posted on X, Truth Social’s competitor, hitting its lowest rate in months, around $24.60. Even a booming stock market couldn’t rescue Trump’s lame stock, which continued to sink in value. 

The stock’s prior low was set late last month, when it hit $19.38 per share. Now it seems things have gotten even more dire. 

Trump’s lowest rate ever comes a little more than two weeks away from September 19, when he and other major investors will finally be able to offload his volatile DJT stock at the end of their “lock-up” period. While Trump has not indicated that he will sell his risky shares, it’s more than likely that everyone else will, according to Forbes. 

After Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance went viral last week for being extraordinarily awkward at a donut shop in Georgia, Democrat Tim Walz had to poke fun at him during a snack stop in Pennsylvania.

Pursuing sweets like whoopie pies and donuts at Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Walz slid in a joke while speaking to voters.

“Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”

Walz and his daughter, Hope, talked with the manager about his business that has existed in the area for over 50 years, and took back whoopie pies and apple cider donuts for volunteers. Compare Walz’s pit stop to that of Vance and you can draw a representative picture of the candidates.

“I’m JD Vance, and I’m running for vice president,” the Republican candidate said to a worker as he walked into Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia, last week.

“OK,” she responded. Vance then ordered “a lot” of glazed doughnuts, “some sprinkle stuff,” cinnamon rolls, and “whatever makes sense” before he was asked to stop filming.

Though certainly being able to order dessert isn’t the most important pressing political skill, being able to speak to others like a human being sure doesn’t hurt.

A website called KBSF-San Francisco News painted a horrible picture: According to the site, then–California Attorney General Kamala Harris hit a 13-year-old girl with her car in 2011, fleeing the scene before she could be caught or identified. The site included a video, credited to KBSF-TV, of a young woman in a wheelchair—the alleged victim, Alicia Brown—recalling the harrowing moments after their vehicles collided.

Except none of it appears to be real.

There is no KBSF-TV in San Francisco, and, according to a BBC Verify investigation, the original website that published the story was registered less than two weeks ago. The photograph attached to the article, which supposedly depicted the crash itself, was actually snapped in Guam in 2018. And the video of Brown—whom the article and video misname several times—also appears to be a deepfake. The x-ray images of Brown’s spine, allegedly taken after the accident, can be traced back to medical journals that have no relation to the supposed crash.

Strangely, it’s not the only recent instance of a wildly fabricated story taking root against Democrats. Behind the operation is John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop who has since relocated to Moscow to work full-time inventing fake news sites in an effort to spread misinformation among American voters ahead of the 2024 election, according to the BBC.

Another site launched by Dougan, The Houston Post, accused the FBI of illegally wiretapping Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Other sites bore equally American names, including the Chicago Crier, Boston Times, and DC Weekly. According to the BBC, most of the stories posted on the sites were not necessarily fake, but rather poor copies of actual news items that had been reworked by A.I. engines. Some of the articles still sported the user’s instructions to the bot at the bottom of the text, at the time of the BBC’s investigation: “Please rewrite this article taking a conservative stance.”

“Russia will be involved in the U.S. 2024 election, as will others,” Chris Krebs, who oversaw election integrity during the 2020 presidential election as director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, warned the BBC.

“We’re already seeing them—from a broader information operations perspective on social media and elsewhere—enter the fray, pushing against already contentious points in U.S. politics,” he said.

Many Republicans would be fine with, and even hope for, Donald Trump’s defeat on Election Day, according to a report from Politico.

Some of the GOP’s elected representatives and commentators don’t want a second Trump term, fearing a shift away from fiscal conservatism and free-market economics, disagreeing with his mercurial stances on in vitro fertilization and abortion rights, and seeing his foreign policy stances as dangerous, the report states.

“There’s a lot of anxiety about what Trump does to Republican ability to win in 2028—and what he also may do to the party in terms of policy long-term,” one of these conservatives said to Politico. “There is just this concern that like, ‘OK, if the party just goes in that direction, then what kind of party is it going forward? And can conservatives, then, have a home going forward?’”

According to Politico, it’s not only Never Trumpers who would be fine with the convicted felon losing, but also some of the leaders in the party’s mainstream who don’t want to oppose Trump publicly but who see a Trump loss as a chance for the Republican Party to move on from the Trump era.

“I think a lot of old-school conservatives might hope that if he loses, there’s an opportunity to just completely forget the last eight years happened,” the same conservative leader said. “I think this battle’s coming in the party no matter what.”

But even if Trump loses, the GOP may not be able to move on. He could still get involved in politics with a simple Truth Social post or phone call from Florida, or he might want to run for president a fourth time in 2028. He would have to lose big to also hurt his stature and diminish his future political prospects, and to undercut his inevitable claim that yet another election was stolen from him. 

There’s also the fact that the MAGA ideology Trump created will persist even without him, which would still give many Republican leaders headaches. Trump’s acolytes in Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, will probably still be around, along with devotees in state politics around the country. The Republican Party may be stuck with Trumpism, even if Trump is defeated in November.

When it comes to targeting and correcting misinformation on social media, X users are totally on their own—even, or maybe especially, when that misinformation is coming from Elon Musk, the company owner.

On Monday, Musk shared an A.I.-generated image of Vice President Kamala Harris dressed in a red uniform with a hammer and sickle insignia, the symbol of the Soviet Union.

“Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” Musk captioned the image that he distributed to his 196 million followers.

Musk was responding directly to a post made by Harris’s official account that misquoted Donald Trump from a December town hall, in which Trump said he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for Day One.” And yet, regardless of Musk’s political messaging, his decision to broadcast a realistic, fabricated image of the Democratic presidential nominee to millions of Americans is troubling—especially considering that the site’s content safety net, Community Notes, was conveniently not working for the misleading post.

Comments underneath Musk’s post attempted to serve their own community note, given the failure of the site’s moderation services.

“COMMUNITY NOTE: This is an AI generated photo and misinformation,” wrote one user who received 23,000 likes on their comment.

Others were highly critical of how Musk was leveraging his massive platform.

“You don’t think this type of extreme manipulation at best, flat out lie at worst isn’t dangerous coming from the richest person on earth that happens to own one of the largest platforms? Doesn’t all the money and power come with more responsibility?” wrote former Florida Senate candidate Mike Harvey.

“Are you testing community notes?” asked political commentator Ed Krassenstein.

The billionaire purchased the social media behemoth for $44 billion, with the help of massive bank loans. Under his control, Musk has introduced radical changes to the site, including laying off 75 percent of its employees, crippling its verification system, and changing the algorithm to promote more advertisements, irrelevant content, and antisemitism. Over the weekend, major stakeholders in X began to share their discontent with Musk’s leadership, arguing that the 53-year-old and his spontaneous decisions had created a “tremendous amount of wealth destruction” for the site’s investors.

A group of Christian nationalists will be working the polls across the country this election season.

A group called “Lion of Judah,” led by self-described Republican opposition researcher Joshua Standifer, is traveling the nation to recruit Christians to “key positions of influence in government like Election Workers.” The group plans to stop what they believe will be widespread election fraud in November as “the first step on the path to victory this Fall.”

The Guardian obtained the Lion of Judah’s election worker training program, featuring a series called “Fight the Fraud: How to Become an Election Worker in 4 Easy Steps!” In it, the group asks poll workers to report “suspicious activities or irregularities” to the Lion of Judah’s “fraud hotline” first, and then tell their local authorities.

To spread the gospel during his “Courage Tour,” Standifer has traveled with Christian nationalist preachers and pro-Trump figures to sow fear about election fraud in swing states, including Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.

The group’s work has gone largely unnoticed, even as local officials in those states make it easier to challenge election results. Last month, for example, the Georgia state election board made it simpler for county election officials to delay or refuse to certify election results.

“Just imagine: it’s election night. Chaos is happening. The polls are closing—they go and volunteers are getting kicked out,” said Standifer on one of his Courage Tour stops. “But what if we had Christians across America, in swing states like Wisconsin, that were actually the ones counting the votes?”

In the same speech in Wisconsin, Standifer described the strategy to train Christians as election workers as “a Trojan horse.”

“They don’t see it coming.”