There is details on the Georgia school shooting suspect
Investigating the Russian Propaganda Campaign in February 2022: RT America, Structura, ANO Dialog, and DOJ’s Election Threat Task Force
In July, the Justice Department said it disrupted a Russian propaganda campaign that used artificial intelligence tools and relied on fake social media accounts impersonating Americans to spread disinformation in the U.S. and other countries. It said the effort involved an editor at RT.
The Department of Justice said that the effort was meant to influence voters in the U.S. and elsewhere.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, many American cable distributors dropped RT’s U.S channel, RT America, from their lineups, and it eventually shut down production. The video scheme allowed RT to covertly reach American audiences without a presence on the airwaves, the indictment alleged.
As part of the Doppelganger investigation, the DOJ said it seized 32 internet domains used in the effort, and named Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog as being involved in the effort.
The effort involved Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, including First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, it said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges at a meeting of the DOJ’s election threats task force, which was set up in 2021 to counter the growing number of threats nationwide against election officials and administrators. He said that the investigation was still active.
In a statement on its website ahead of the charges, RT dismissed the findings, joking that their responses in an office poll included comments like “Ha!” and “2016 called and it wants its clichés back.”
The Doppler Ganger Campaign: The Indictment of Afanasyeva, a Russian Intelligence Agent, and a Corresponding Commentator
The United States security and intelligence community has been warning about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election in hopes of disrupting the election and hurting the candidate.
“Russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told senators in May at a briefing about election risks.
The Washington Post and Fox News are among the news outlets that have been impersonated by the campaign, which was given the name Doppleganger.
The Social Design Agency and Structura, as well as their founders, were found guilty by the US in March of orchestrating a fake news campaign at the direction of the Russian Presidential Administration.
The campaign used fake French-language news sites to promote false claims of corruption at the recent Paris Olympics and warn of possible violence, according to a Microsoft report.
The bot farm used AI to create the fake profiles on X, formerly known as Twitter. The accounts were supportive of Russia’s war in Ukranian. The effort is said to be the work of an editor at the Russian state-owned media outlet. The project was funded by the Kremlin and run by a Russian intelligence officer.
Afanasyeva allegedly exerted a lot of control over the Tennessee company’s operations and what it put out, including pushing for specific angles that echoed Kremlin narratives.
Tenet allegedly received some $9.7 million from RT, according to the DOJ. Of that, $8.7 million went to the production companies of three unnamed commentators, the indictment claims. One, referred to as “Commentator-1”—the description appears to be of either Johnson or Rubin—was allegedly contracted for $400,000 per month for four weekly videos. Nearly $10 million of Tenet Media’s funds was received from RT, which accounts for about 99% of the funds deposited into the company’s accounts.
None of the four were accused of wrongdoing, but did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment,” Johnson wrote on X, referring to himself and his lawyers, “which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.” Pool also released a statement on X, saying in part that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims.” Pool had a post that Rubin liked.
Investigating the Murder of a Russian President: Lauren Chen’s Tenet Media and the Project to Spread Kremlin Propaganda
Lauren Chen, a Canadian conservative, founded Tenet with her husband, Liam, the president and founder of Tenet Media. Chen hosts a show on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and is a contributor to right-wing activist group Turning Point USA. She wrote pieces for the public radio station.
Federal officials have accused Russia of using unwitting right-wing American influencers in its quest to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.
Afanasyeva also urged the influencers to share the company’s videos on their own channels, and got annoyed when she didn’t think they were promoting them enough, according to the indictment.
Johnson said he had been pitched by a “media startup” and had “negotiated a standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.” His most recent video is from August.
The Tennessee company offered lucrative terms, according to the indictment. One person was paid $400,000 a month, a $100,000 signing bonus, and another performance bonus in exchange for four videos a week.
Afanasyeva also allegedly requested the company post a video of “a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia” — likely a reference to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Moscow in February. According to the indictment, a producer at the company told one of the founders “it just feels like overt shilling,” but was told to “put it out there.”
There wasn’t any influence on me in that way. There is no change in my perspective or nature, according to Matt Christiansen, a Tenet Media contributor. How do I end up saying someone else’s words when I write them down?
“Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show and the contents of the show are often apolitical,” Pool wrote. “The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company.”
The project’s Russian connections were not apparent to the influential people. On Wednesday, Johnson, Pool and Rubin posted statements on X describing themselves as victims. Southern did not respond to the request for comment.
The indictment accuses Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva of working with the Tennessee company’s founders to conceal the true origins of its funding. They told some that the company was being bankrolled by a wealthy European banker. “In truth and in fact, Grigoriann was a fictional persona,” the indictment said.
“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.
Source: How Russian operatives covertly hired U.S. influencers to create viral videos
Up First: The Ups and Downs of Influence-Buying Influencers in the Age of Internet Piracy and Propaganda
“Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” wrote Renée DiResta, the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, about how online influencers spread propaganda and rumors, in a post on Threads.
What sets the RT operation apart from many other interference efforts is that it appeared to reach a real audience, thanks to the recognizable names attached.
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Apalachee High School Shooting Suspect in Russia: David and Gilly, after the tornado destroyed their Nashville Recording Studio, preparing to appear before the next grand jury in Georgia
The FBI had a warning about the 14-year-old who is accused of shooting and killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Images of guns are in some of the threats. The FBI says it identified and interviewed the then-13-year-old suspect and his father. The father said they had hunting guns but the teen didn’t have unsupervised access to them. The boy denied making threats. The sheriff’s office contacted local schools to watch him but there was no reason for him to be taken into custody. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the teen would be charged with murder and tried as an adult.
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Folk duo David and Gilly have made a career of singing about hard times. They are living one of their songs. Four years ago, a tornado destroyed their Nashville recording studio, flipping their career and lives upside down. But they’ve turned disaster into inspiration with their new album Woodland, named after their once-shattered studio. We had to make some art or we wouldn’t be able to remember what kind of people we were.
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