The Scoop
A conservative American media company has fired one of the YouTubers implicated in an alleged Russian influence operation exposed by the US Department of Justice this week.
“Lauren Chen was an independent contractor, whose contract has been terminated,” Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon said in an email to Semafor.
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Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, are the co-founders of Tenet Media, a previously obscure media company that paid eye-popping sums to right-wing influencers to produce videos that echoed Russian propaganda and other right-wing talking points, according to an indictment.
She also contributed videos to BlazeTV, an arm of Blaze Media, which was founded by the former Fox News host and talk radio figure Glenn Beck, which was not mentioned in Wednesday’s indictment.
The two Americans were also not named in the indictment, which instead charged two Russians associated with the state-owned Russia Today with money laundering and violating foreign influence laws.
Chen didn’t respond to an inquiry from Semafor.
Ben’s view
The Russian government wildly overpaid for online videos that figures like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson would have made anyway, but the new indictments get to the heart of one of the deep debates in American politics, over a Russian role in the rise of Donald Trump’s right-wing populism.
After the 2016 election, many Democrats came to believe that Russian interference was the key factor in his election. And many Republicans claimed that the entire investigation of Russian interference was a “hoax.“
In fact, Russia invests heavily in interfering with American and European elections, and the Wikileaks operation in 2016 played a major role in that election. But Russia’s investment in fake social media campaigns and, in this case, real right-wing influencers largely served to amplify — and it’s unclear how effectively — existing forces in American politics. Wednesday’s indictment was at the same time shocking and unsurprising, revealing a Russian media operation with, above all, a big budget for the 2024 contest.