September 11, 2024 • 37 mins
Robert, James, and Gare discuss Russia's secret payment to Tenet Media and conservative content creators as a part covert operations to influence US politics.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Oh what's.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Getting indicted by the FBI? My several people I don't
like it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart,
and today this week, well, for the last couple of weeks,
the thing that's fallen apart is Tenet Media. This is
not related to Christopher Nolan, that we can prove at
this exact moment. It is instead a media adventure starring
(00:32):
a bunch of assholes that turned out to all be
an op by the Russian government, and none of said
assholes claim they knew anything, even though they got paid
one hundred thousand dollars a video. Anyway, We're going to
talk about all that and more today, but I'm going
to bring onto the program now my co hosts, Garrison
Davis and James Stout.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I'm not getting one hundred k per episode here, but
if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell the government now
that it was actually a foreign government, saying me.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I would keep tweeting about it.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Fun fact about both of you guys before we get
into this, if you reverse your last names, you sound
like Confederate era generals.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Garrison Stout, James Davis like names. Davis Garrison Stout.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah, oh yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, that's so that
is our secret backstory. We had to actually switch them
when we join cool Zone Media due to a Confederate ties.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, and the fact that you're one hundred and ninety
years old. So Garrison, you want to take us off here.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
So Tene Media was this kind of small right wings
startup that hired a whole bunch of more well known
content creators on the right wing sphere, from like Timpoole,
Dave Rubin, Bennie Johnson, Lauren Southern. Yeah, people who are
either just like conservative commentators or you know, in someone
like Lauren Southern's case has been like an alt right
kind of white supremacist media figure for quite a while.
(01:52):
And they put together this little collection of people to
make like content for tenants on YouTube channel as well
as licensing some of their regular tent And this company
was ostensibly started by another right wing YouTuber named Lauren
Chen and her husband Liam Donovan. Chen's been like on
Fox News News Max, Daily Wire and was employed at
(02:14):
The Blaze, where she's no longer employed based on the
allocations inside this DOJ indictment. So yeah, it was a
small collection not super kind of noteworthy. Honestly, in a
lot of cases, lots of people weren't super familiar with
Tenet media. I know they also hired like Taylor Hanson,
who was kind of one of the first guys to
report on grooming LGBTQ stuff like a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
That's kind of what was immediately weird about them to
everyone who pays attention to this stuff is that their
videos did not get a crazy amount of engagement. They
were clearly not an established like they came out of nowhere,
but they had the money, the money to pay for
people who weren't cheap. Timpool, if you don't know, Tim
is one of the most profitable influencers on the right
(02:59):
wing chunks of the Internet. He's a guy who kind
of got his start as a citizen journalist during occupy.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Really, he's one of these guys.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
All he does is he gets on he reads news articles,
he reads the headlines of news articles, he talks about
how we're all doomed to left wing terrorism or whatever,
and then he makes millions of dollars. He's a frustrating
individual to say the least, but he doesn't come cheap.
And Hansen also doesn't come cheap. Dave Rubin is not
an inexpensive person to bring onto your team. So it
(03:28):
was kind of clear from the beginning there's a lot
of money behind this thing that seems to have come
out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Whose money is it?
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And that is what the federal government's been trying to
figure out. And we have now a better indication on
where all of these kind of right wing content firms,
or at least this one who is employing some very
unfortant people, where they are getting some of their money from.
Because there's a lot of money flying around this space.
Lots of these guys are obviously filled by like fossil
fuel billionaires.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
You can look at like the early funding for the
Daily Wired that has a lot of money, but for this,
for this smaller, kind of lesser known company, how are
they paying one hundred thousand dollars per episode to these guys?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And it's also the Daily Wire definitely started inorganically by
getting a lot of fossil fuel money pumped into it.
But one thing you have to hand it to them
is they built a business that is a functional business, right,
they are now profitable in their own regard or at
least were there's some evidence their traffic collapsed recently, but
you saw you saw them have a growth curve that
(04:29):
looked pretty organic for a media organization, which you didn't
see with Tenant.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
No, no.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And it seems the only way to actually pay these
millions and millions of dollars to all these people is
if you are actually the government of Russia who is
starting covert operations that's their words, not mine, to influence
the US election by like both talking about like Ukraine,
using these mouthpieces, but also just kind of so general division,
(04:57):
which seems to be kind of the main tactic. And
Robert elected to actually go through some of this GEZ
twenty three page indictment and kind of hopefully we can
find some of some of the some of the better
funnier little tidbits here, because there's a lot of interesting
information about kind of the inter workings of some of
these media groups and how exactly Timpoole was convinced by
(05:23):
a Russian agent.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yeah, a Russian agent pretending to be three different people.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Pretending to be some mysterious European billionaire.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So the document starts with some stuff that I had
been unaware, which is that you know, because Russia Today
is kind of the first large Russian government affiliated media
organization that has been like putting up propaganda in the
United States, and the FBI has been watching them like
a hawk. And so they quote hear from the editor
in chief of RT after the expanded Russian invasion in
(05:56):
February twenty twenty two when he describes Russia Today, which
has always argued that it's a legitimate news organization, as
an entire empire of covert projects designed to shape public
opinion in Western audiences. And one of these covert projects
it described as the funding of what we now know
is Tenant Media. Right, it's described in these documents because
(06:17):
their indictments is a Tennessee based online creation company, but
it's it can only be referring to Tenant Media.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
As employees have since admitted that yes, it is for
sure to Tenant Media.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yes, yes, there's no doubt about this. We're not like
reading into the what the FED said here at all.
So they spent over the course of about a year
ten million dollars I think it's actually was more like
nine point six, but ten million dollars basically just buying
these influencers oh my god. First off, things we could
do with ten million dollars yeah, oh oh, James, we'd
(06:49):
be sailing to me and Maar and on a pale
rocket launchers.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
The things that their military could do with ten billion dollars.
Sending dude to the front with ass off plates. Yeah,
it's anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So the kind of key detail there is how much
they were making per one of these dog shit videos,
which is about one hundred thousand dollars per YouTube video.
That's what Tim was getting. I think Dave Rubin was
getting close to just half a million a month to
do like a weekly video. So when that is the
kind of money we're talking.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
About, and Tim was also being paid one hundred thousand
dollars per weekly video as well. He was making one
video a week, that was what he decided on his contract,
So he was breaking in at least four hundred thousand,
if not five hundred thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
Yeah, and then they had signing and download bonuses on
top of that.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Which is like even for them, is more than you
could get on YouTube for the kind of traffic that
they get. That is that is like the top one
percent of the top one percent of YouTube creators are
making money like that, and certainly no one with the
kind of views these teniviity is we're getting. So anyway, Garrison,
you've got a clip to play.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, here's a clip that's definitely a totally genuine opinion.
Not impacted by those one hundred thousand dollars of Tim
Poole talking about Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Trigger warning, most annoying man on earth.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country.
Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I
will stress again one of the greatest enemies of our
nation right now is Ukraine. They are expanding this war now,
don't get me wrong. I know you've got criminal elements
of the US government pushing them and guiding them and
(08:32):
telling them what to do. Ukraine is now accused a
German warrant issued for blowing up the nord Stream pipeline
in triggering this conflict. Ukraine is the greatest threat to
this nation and to the world. We should rescind all
funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we
(08:53):
should apologize to Russia.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Interesting, I wonder what would compel a man to say
that huis're curious.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
There's no way to know Garrison.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So since they publicly launched in November of last year,
Tenant Media posted almost two thousand videos that got about
sixteen million views. And sixteen million views is a lot
for a YouTube channel, but not if you've put out
two thousand videos. So again, that's what I mean when
I say, like, this is not the kind of audience
that you would get this kind of money organically for, right,
(09:23):
Like this is was obviously and I mentioned this because
this is obviously suspicious to the creators. You cannot be
Timpoole is not a smart man, but you cannot work
for YouTube the way that he has and not know
that something is fucked up with the money, just if.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
You're not a mental arithmetician like myself. That is eight
thousand views video. I made a video once about how
to use hiking polls, which has around that many views.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I have a video that I fucked up when filming
another video while I was reviewing products fifteen years ago
before anyone knew who I was that has more than
eight years Like, where's all money, Vladimir, Yeah, yeah, come on, Vladimir,
Like I'll there's a lot I'll do for half a
million dollars well.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And I think part of this as well is not
just trying to prop up tenants owned news itself. It's
making these specific content creators lives more comfortable, because the
better that these guys do. That's all that Russia is
like interested in, as alleged in this document, right, It's
that they just want to make sure that these guys
can can still talk about Ukraine as certainly as like
(10:26):
this like evil and how Russia is like the traditionalist
Christian empire and right wing resistance to globalist domination. But
in terms of like just wanting to amplify US domestic
divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core government
of Russia's interests in the ongoing war in Ukraine. As
said in the document, all they need to do is
just make sure these guys are having a lot of money,
(10:48):
so like their comfortable tenant doesn't need to be like
a successful media operation where like they're making more money
on YouTube than they're paying their influences.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
That's not the point.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
The point is just to give these guys a lot
of money to keep talking the way they're talking.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, what was also interesting to me, and this comes
from a wired article wired downloaded as many of these
videos as they could and then ran them through. This
is actually one of the journalistic uses for these large
language models. They ran them through like one of those
machine learning algorithms to just kind of look at how
often different subjects are mentioned, because no human being could
(11:21):
analyze that many videos with any kind of like speed, right,
And one thing they found is that Ukraine, which you
would imagine being the focus of a horrific war that
is bleeding Russia's military was mentioned about like a third
as often as transgender people. The vast majority of the
content was US culture war stuff right like woke is
(11:45):
much more of a focus than anything to do directly
with Russian military operations or Russian like government, like what
you would imagine, right, And the reason for that is
that they see it as number one, building a sense
of solidarity between American conservative and Russia, which is largely imaginary.
I'll be talking about this in an episode later, but like,
Russia is not the country a lot of conservatives in
(12:07):
the US think it is. But more to the point,
it's just sort of stoking division, right, rather than actually
needing to change American minds on Ukraine. In much of
a concerted way, like if you kind of keep them
ginned up and angry about everything the quote unquote Left
is doing, they will be against supporting Ukrainian resistance anyway, right,
(12:27):
And that's the bet the Russians made, very very astutely,
and it seems to be paying off for them. One
of the more interesting facts here is that one of
the primary contacts, this is one of the people who
has been indicted, who was working with you know, Pool
and these other creators, is an employee of Russia today
with the perfect spy name, Constantine Kalashnikov.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Just amazing stuff.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
How is that literally their day?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah? How do they not just change it?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
We call it a Kalashnikov because the guy's name was Kalashnikov.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
It's just lovely. It's just lovely.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It's breathtaking because if you put a character with that
name in a Bond film, everyone would be like, come on, man,
it's not nineteen sixty five anymore, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
But that that's just the person's actual name. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So they had a couple of fake personas within the company,
but this was a person who like directly talked to
the employees of people like Pool, the editors and whatnot
without disclosing that he worked at Russia. Today now there's
evidence that people who worked for some of these creators
in their discords, like Editors and whatnot, saw this as
(13:37):
deeply suspicious. Probably the most interesting came from when we
now know it was Tucker Carlson posted a video during
his trip in Moscow like where he was going to
a Russian grocery store to be like, look, Russia has
grocery stores. Everything's fine here. His editor in the discord
was like, this seems like a little much. What are
we doing here? Basically, and the statement made was along
(13:58):
the lines of like, you know, this is what the
people paying us want us to get out right, which
is clear evidence that people were aware of what they
were doing to some extent.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
At least among like the tenant media producers, there was
a growing awareness of what was actually going on. Obviously,
all of the on air talent still maintains that they
are the victims of an international conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
In a victim pays I guess.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Oh my god, and no, I think one of the
funniest parts is definitely this fake European businessman I believe
he's referred to as Edward Grengorian.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yes, it was very funny, but we'll talk about Edward.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Let's throw to ads first and then we'll get back
to this, and we're back Garrison. Let's talk about Edward.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
So in the document they talked about how Klashnikov, this
other RT person, as well as Tenants founders worked together
to deceive commentators wanted to who we believe are our
Timpool and Dave Rubin. The point was to let leverage
their existing audiences and license their videos they were already making.
So together the RT people and the Tenant founders tried
(15:20):
to trick Pool and who we believe is Ruben into
thinking that the person providing these one hundred thousand dollars
per episodes was a European businessman and private investor named
Edward Gregorian, which is a wonderful a wonderful fake name.
And this was not real person. This was a completely
(15:40):
fake person. At some point, I believe Dave Ruben or
commentator number one, requested that the founder provide like a
profile or an article.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, it was commentator too that wanted to know
more about quote, would like to know more about the company.
And who he will be working with.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, so they asked for like this, like one page
profile on like who this guy was, and this was
provided and he was described as an accomplished finance professional
who had various positions in Brussels and France at a
multinational bank, including the director of private banking division and
wealth management.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
The one page on this guy, who is supposedly their investor,
shows an obvious stock photo of a man on a
private jet with his face blurred out face bloods. Yeah,
that's what that looks real. Yeah, not sketchy at all.
This is this is an actual guy quote. Founder one
transmitted the Edward Gregorian profile to Commentator one, who is
(16:36):
either Pool or Ruben.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
We believe it's Reuben.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think that one's Ruben because Tim wouldn't have asked
for more details, Honor. About May twelfth, twenty twenty three,
Founder one reported to Persona one that Commentator one had
a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the
reference to social justice. I think it may be because
that's usually a term used by liberals, but we're trying
to create a conservative network. Founder one suggested that Commentator
(16:59):
one and Edward could simply speak together to clarify the profile.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yes, and I know there was a secure call between
a Russian atent pretending to be mister Gregorian to Tempoole,
and allegedly this other call with commentator one, who we
think is Ruben. So there was like conversations between like
Rubin and Pool with people like further involved in the
(17:24):
actual like espionage parts of this and the actual like
you're talking to people affiliated with like Russian spies in
order to like sell this lie.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I did find it very funny.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Where did you read the section where they sort of
did a forensic analysis of the three persona's email accounts. Yeah, no,
I'm not far up in doing it yet. So they
had three different personas, so all access from the same
I P address and had different presenting a three different individuals, right,
with three different email accounts. Obviously the DOJ has been
able to get access to those EMAT accounts, and they
(17:55):
found that the people using those email accounts made mistakes
in signing them. So one was supposed to come from
PERSONA three that they mistakenly signed to Edward Gregorian, and
another time PERSONA one sent a draft of an email
to PERSONA to two, which PERSONA two then copied and
pasted into an email like the object was extremely poor,
(18:16):
it would seem, and it didn't set anyone off to
kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Make that point in terms of, like what's happening to
these guys right now? What they've been indicted for is
violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Like, if you
are acting as the agent of a foreign government, you
have to register in the United States. You have a
freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom to create
propaganda for another government and pretend.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
That you're not right.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, and so you know, obviously one of the things
the Feds needed to indict them is evidence that they knew,
specifically they were being employed by the Russian government, Right
that like the Russians hadn't somehow snuck money to the
people who founded Tenant Media.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And so at one point Founder two gets on the
Investor Discord channel to submit one of the influencers, I
think it's Rubens invoices to PERSONA one and press for
payment of those invoices. On September eleventh, twenty twenty three,
never forget, at approximately eight oh seven pm Central Time,
Founder two wrote in that discord channel. Today marks two
(19:14):
weeks since I submitted the invoice for August. Any idea
for the delay. We are signing the large contracts. We
need to be certain we will get the funding to
pay these people. While waiting for a response, they searched
for the current time in Moscow. So jess unbelievable opsec
like giving the government absolute knowledge of intent.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I mean similarly, earlier on in the document quote in
their private respondence while working directly for URT pursue into
Founder one's written contract, Founder one and Founder two regularly
referred to their sponsor as the Russians and for exact honor.
About May twelfth, twenty twenty one, Founder two message Founder
one on discord, quote, so we're billing the Russians from
the corporation, right honor. About May twenty second, Founder one
(20:01):
message Founder two on discord. Also, the Russians paid, so
we're good to build them for the second month. I
guess nailed it on her. About June second, Founder one
message Founder two on Discord, Also, I say we build
the Russians for the last month, once we're done.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
The extra offense. I wonder if they knew they were
working for the Russian government.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
There's a lot more that's just like this.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
They constantly referred to the source of their income, at
least to each other as quote unquote the Russians. And
then in like outreach to like talent, which is, you know,
a generous word to refer to Timpoole and others, they
were a little bit more vague, but they certainly made
kind of coy references to it in their producer discord beautiful.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Well, yeah, so, I mean the big question here with
all of this is, like, did any of these major
right wing media figures who have like they got hired
in part because they were already doing the job the
Russians wanted them doing, you know, building up this kind
of hatred that exists on the right over the idea
of funding Ukraine and Ukrainian resistance to the Russian war machine.
(21:06):
Like all of that kind of stuff is like why
these people got brought on anyway. Tim Poole has just
kind of been one of the most reflexively anti Ukraine
voices in conservative media, and Ruben is very effective at
getting Americans to hate other Americans, Like he's one of
the big kind of anti trans culture warriors out there.
Did O Hansen Like that's why they wanted these guys
(21:28):
like they wanted to encourage them basically to keep it up.
And you know, the question then is what did these
guys know and when did they know it? And the
bigger question because I have my suspicions, and my suspicions
are a lot and immediately, but none of that is
in this indictment obviously. And the big question then is
(21:48):
is the federal government going to attempt to prove anything
like do they want to actually go after these guys?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
My guess is not, because there very rarely are consequences
for these people. But I'm curious to what y'all think.
Speaker 6 (22:01):
No, it's it's it seems not.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I'm both both Pool and I think three others have
made statements saying that they've been contacted by the FBI
as a potential victim of a crime and that they
will be happy to assist the FBI investigating this matter.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Now, that doesn't mean the FBI isn't necessarily looking into them,
because that's all which the FBI would use if they
suspected them. But yeah, my guess is that they lawyered up.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Absolutely. It was funny both in there in Betty Johnson's
and Timpole's immediate statements. They called this elk DOJ indictment,
which is not true. It was not leaked, it was
just unsealed.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, they just arrested people. Yeah, I'm very sure there's
a press release.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Like Also, one of the final posts from Tenant Media,
I was talking about how this woman named Lauren's son
was charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese
Communist Party. Quote he or she is talking about DEI?
Why would the Chinese government want to push a DEI
in America?
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Yeah, this is This is I think one of one
of the final Twitter posts before their account got taken down.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, beautiful. Their Rumble account is still live and kicking. Yeah.
Oh thank goodness that out.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Also, can we talk about their graphic design just for
a moment, because it is dog shit? Yeah, Tenant Mediums,
Tenant Yeah, like, have you I don't know, have you?
Have you been on their Rumble account? Garrison, you know,
I can't.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
I can't say I have been on their Rumble account
as of as of recent.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The last time I looked at Rumble it was their
booth at the rnc OW.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Let me tell you they're back and genuinely some of
the most like deranged. It's just it's extremely busy, it's
very nineties like, it's a lot of bright colors.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
The clearest indication to me that this was absolutely a
Russian op is that the company described itself as quote
a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political
and cultural issues.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Definitely Russians. Definitely Russians.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
You're like, oh, I wonder who wrote that? Who whatever?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Describe themselves.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Tim Poole had never even seen the word head of
Redox before.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Yeah, it's crazy, it's wild.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Yeah, they put multipolar into a theosaurus and that's what
they came up with.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It is interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
One of the things in this indictment that I did
find kind of worth talking about is that it specifically
notes that folks at Russia Today when they were because
they were largely deplatformed after the expanded Russian invasion in
twenty twenty two early twenty twenty two, and the indictment
quotes the editor in chief of Russia Today being like,
but it's fine because we were able to rebuild our
(24:33):
following on Twitter. So I don't know if you, just
in case you had any questions about like what Elon
Musk's reforms at Twitter have accomplished. One of them is
that we should probably roll to ads again. And then, Garrison,
you had a very fun document you wanted to take.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Us through, yes to kind of talk about why they
might be doing some of this. There was one other
document that was unsealed that kind of kind of sheds
a light on Russia's exact focus on influencing US politics.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Well, that's great, speaking of influencing US politics. Our advertisers
probably don't.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
There's another document called Exhibit nine to A, which is
originally in Russian and this translated Coffee is provided in
this PDF, and this appears to be some kind of
instructional manual for why exactly people are going about this,
why exactly is Tim Poole and all these others getting
(25:40):
paid to talk about what they talk about, And then
it also kind of explains like tactics and like how
to actually go about it. So the first bit of
this of this document, they just start talking about like
the US two party system, which is really funny, and
they primarily explain the two party systems differences as being
like the way that they affect that the US political
(26:01):
party B or Democratic Party includes people of color and
quote unquote supporters of affirmative action and reverse discrimination, i e.
Infringement on the rights of the white population of the
United States. And then meanwhile, the Republican Party are victims
of discrimination by people of color unquote. So that's how
they kind of frame the US two party system is
(26:22):
that there's these poor white people being oppressed by wokeism.
They end this little introduction on the two party system
by saying, quote, a key characteristic of the American media
is it skew towards the Democratic Party's influence. While society
is split between supporters of the new globalist socialism and
traditional values, the media is democrat by over seventy five percent.
(26:43):
Situation for the Republicans is made complicated by the censorship
on social media and Democrats oriented new media. So some
kind of weird phrasing there because it is being translated
from Russian. But they're talking about how liberalism is inherently
biased in media and that's something that promoted while being
racist and being a Republican is something that is harder
(27:05):
to get paid for by big media to talk about.
And that's why they have this campaign, which they title
Gorilla media campaign in the United States. They justify this
by saying that there is no pro Russian and or
putin mainstream politicians or succinctly large numbers of influencers and voters,
(27:25):
and this is one of the things they're trying to do.
Another quote is that Americans are quote dissatisfied by the
dramatic decline and center of living and large expenditures of
offensive policy in the United States, in Europe and Ukraine.
They are afraid of losing the American way of life
in the American dream. It is these sentiments that should
be exploited in the course of an information campaign in
(27:47):
the United States. Smart The campaign topics used in their
Gorilla Media campaign are included here. The first ones encroaching
universal poverty. Number two is the risk of job loss
for white Americans, for people of color, perverts and disabled,
constant lies of the Democratic Party administration, the threat of
(28:07):
crime coming from people of color and immigrants, including new
immigrants from Ukraine. Overspending on foreign policy at the expense
of interests of white US citizens. Constant lies to the
voters by the Democrats in power. Last, but not least
America is suffering a defeat despite liberals' efforts. We are
being drawn into the water. Our guys will die in Ukraine.
(28:31):
The target audience of their campaign is listed as Republican voters,
Donald Trump supporters, supporters of quote traditional family values, white
Americans representing the lower and middle class.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It's frustrating
that it is working. Yeah, to be quite frank, it's
exactly what the Russiagate conspiracy theorists have been saying for years. Unfortunately, Yeah, unfortunately,
and like a shitload of people on the left have
just been mocking them endlessly, in part because they've bought
a lot of this propaganda.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
And this is certainly different from the way they were
going about it in twenty sixteen, right, And this isn't
absolutely yeah, like this, this isn't the same like Facebook
stuff they're doing, although Tenant did did have Facebook accounts.
These are like weaponizing these people that have gotten big
on YouTube and other platforms for talking about the same
type of things that Russia kind of wants them to
talk about, and it's just making sure that they have
the ability to do so. Kind of Lastly, in this
(29:26):
information doc They talk about kind of like where you
can spread this disinformation, It says here quote on Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube. We need to create multiple perishable accounts, primarily
for the work with comments. Websites should serve as the
sources of information for dissemination and for video content YouTube
accounts with a relatively small number of subscribers and commentators unquote.
(29:47):
The list of information products can be disseminated includes texts
of posts, comments on social media, memes including cariactures and collages,
and video content including news stories in the Fox News style.
They then propose creating a quote unquote project office to
run this style of like media campaign. This consists of
(30:09):
three segments monitoring US media and social media accounts of
Republican politicians, a text factor with a minimum of five
to four main topic based recommendations including about ten basic
posts on social media and forty to sixty comments, and
then managing an editorial office with a daily output of
(30:29):
three to four pictures and memes, and a video editorial
office with a daily output of three to four videos
per day.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
In order for this work to be effective, you need
to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum
of realistic information. At the same time, you should continuously
repeat that this is what's really happening, but the official
media will never tell you about it or show it
to you.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
So, I mean, like part of what's frustrating about this
number one is just like they clearly have watched Alex Jones,
and like, I've learned a great deal from how he's
done this, which, unfortunately something Alex used to claim about putin.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
That fuck maybe he was right.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
But the bigger, more frustrating point to me is that like, oh,
they didn't need to do any of this at all,
Like this was all working just fine without them directly
getting involved.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
This way, I kind of am intro.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I think it's probably just a reaction to the fact
that they had a lot of their more traditional stuff
get deplatformed after February twenty twenty two. Yeah, but like
this was all stuff the right was doing organically in
their media without Russian money.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
They didn't need this.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
They certainly are trying to kind of rebuild some of
their like directabilities influence after like RT got deplatformed. The
other part that's interesting to me is because like this
indictment focuses on like Tenet media as being kind of
one of these video editorial offices that with a daily
output of three to four videos a day. Like that
that's what this that's what this kind of guy to describes,
That's what tenant is this evidence. Stock also talks about
(31:57):
how like they're also just like faking engagement, getting like
sixty comments per day on various social media posts on
political topics. So that also like points towards like a
lot of people like driving like discussions and trying to
like increase the actual like visibility and engagement is being
boosted by this like non authentic interference. A lot of
(32:18):
videos will go viral not just because they had a
lot of people watch them initially, it's because they have
a lot of engagement in like the comments, and that's
what's going to push something to actually show up more
people's feats. Like that is how Twitter currently works. There's
a degree to which that's how things work on YouTube.
So it's also just trying to to try to like
engineer virality by faking a certain amount of engagement. Yeah,
(32:40):
there's also like that that degree of like interference beyond
just actually you know, paying for Tim Poole to talk
about Ukraine and talk about how gay people are evil
once a week.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I think that's probably all we've got to say about
this for right now. This is not the most surprising
news in the world. It is good that it's embarrassing
some of these guys.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I think it's actually going to hurt their listenership at all.
The people who listen to them don't really care.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah, they'll lie out of it.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Yeah, they'll find some way to bit and to make
themselves the victim out of it.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
They will not have any reflection that there was a
whole Russian operation to identify like influencers to scout for
that would serve Russia's purposes. That they will never reflect
on why they specifically were scouted for. No, Yeah, they
will never reflect that. The only bit of like, the
only bit of hesitation that they had to take this
(33:32):
money was that the profile for the think businessman mentioned
to social justice. That was the only thing that they
like protested. That's the only thing that they actually wanted
to look further into was the fact that he listed
social justice is something he cares about, and not the
fact that he just doesn't exist at all.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
This is a completely fake person.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
They were able to flag social justice but not flag
that he just did not exist.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
It.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
None of this will cause any kind of recollection because
these guys don't care. Like the reason why they say
what they say is because they can make five hundred
thousand dollar a month extra saying it. So imagine how
much money they're already making. Yeah, Like that explains why
they're doing what they're doing. Like they don't care what
they say anymore. They make such a ridiculous amount of
money that it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, and that's what it's always been about. Like they
have never believed in anything.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, they don't need to like reflect on any of
this because they're still making tons of money. They're making
slightly less than they used to now that Russia's not
paying them, but they are still making tons especially like
if this is what they thought like the going price was,
like they suggested these amounts, like they this is like
the regular price for them, and that kind of points
towards how much money is flying around this right wing
medio ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yep, great good stuff.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, the last couple of videos were focusing on this
ridiculous lie that migrant's taken over an apartment complex in Colorado,
Like all this shit that just isn't true that they've
been able to make true. I don't know, it's so frustrating.
I find it's so frustrating. Also, how like Pool has
been able to run this line, Like the media won't
tell you this because there are things that legitimately our
(35:04):
neoliberal establishment media completely ignores, and like that leaves the
door open for this kind of shit, and as a result,
people can fill that space with lies, as we're seeing here.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Well, so the next time you get contacted by a
shady man on WhatsApp to pay you five hundred thousand
dollars about talking about how gay people are evil, you
might want to check to see if he's actually a
Russian agent first. You just you might want to do
a little a little bit of work.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, they have to tell you. It's like cops. You
just ask him that they have to tell you, you
know what, Just send him my way. That's exciting new
content news for you, guys.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
I will not get paid by Russia to lie. I
might get paid by like Sweden, you know, to like
advance Swedish interests.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Maybe there's a number of most countries I would lie for.
Besides that aren't Russia. Yeah, would I would lie for
like Japan? Probably No, that could get dark.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Actually yeah, yeah, I leave that one out.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
Bro Sweden, Sweden's perfect, No, it's scarce.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I think you're underestimating the kind of shit Sweden gets
up to.
Speaker 6 (36:07):
Oh no, they're certainly evil. They're certainly evil.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
But in terms of like a very like milk toast
country to get paid to increase their foreign interest, then
I think Sweden's about as good as you're gonna get.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
Like, come on, like hungry, come on, come.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
On, Switzerland.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
You know all the Switzerland you would you would quickly
get implicated, but they could pay.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
All the financial all the financial price.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
Yeah, Robert and I received material benefits from the Burmese PDF.
We both had a nice lunch from them, and that
has been what we've done all our coverage. It's time
for us to come clean now.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
We did, although you did get very sick afterwards, sonvably sick,
and you lucked me out of the toilet, So yeah,
that was pretty funny.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
What it's time anyway, Rip Tenant Media, you were a
big one.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 6 (37:20):
Thanks for listening.
Also media, Oh what's.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Getting indicted by the FBI? My several people I don't
like it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart,
and today this week, well, for the last couple of weeks,
the thing that's fallen apart is Tenet Media. This is
not related to Christopher Nolan, that we can prove at
this exact moment. It is instead a media adventure starring
(00:32):
a bunch of assholes that turned out to all be
an op by the Russian government, and none of said
assholes claim they knew anything, even though they got paid
one hundred thousand dollars a video. Anyway, We're going to
talk about all that and more today, but I'm going
to bring onto the program now my co hosts, Garrison
Davis and James Stout.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I'm not getting one hundred k per episode here, but
if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell the government now
that it was actually a foreign government, saying me.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I would keep tweeting about it.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Fun fact about both of you guys before we get
into this, if you reverse your last names, you sound
like Confederate era generals.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Garrison Stout, James Davis like names. Davis Garrison Stout.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah, oh yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, that's so that
is our secret backstory. We had to actually switch them
when we join cool Zone Media due to a Confederate ties.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, and the fact that you're one hundred and ninety
years old. So Garrison, you want to take us off here.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
So Tene Media was this kind of small right wings
startup that hired a whole bunch of more well known
content creators on the right wing sphere, from like Timpoole,
Dave Rubin, Bennie Johnson, Lauren Southern. Yeah, people who are
either just like conservative commentators or you know, in someone
like Lauren Southern's case has been like an alt right
kind of white supremacist media figure for quite a while.
(01:52):
And they put together this little collection of people to
make like content for tenants on YouTube channel as well
as licensing some of their regular tent And this company
was ostensibly started by another right wing YouTuber named Lauren
Chen and her husband Liam Donovan. Chen's been like on
Fox News News Max, Daily Wire and was employed at
(02:14):
The Blaze, where she's no longer employed based on the
allocations inside this DOJ indictment. So yeah, it was a
small collection not super kind of noteworthy. Honestly, in a
lot of cases, lots of people weren't super familiar with
Tenet media. I know they also hired like Taylor Hanson,
who was kind of one of the first guys to
report on grooming LGBTQ stuff like a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
That's kind of what was immediately weird about them to
everyone who pays attention to this stuff is that their
videos did not get a crazy amount of engagement. They
were clearly not an established like they came out of nowhere,
but they had the money, the money to pay for
people who weren't cheap. Timpool, if you don't know, Tim
is one of the most profitable influencers on the right
(02:59):
wing chunks of the Internet. He's a guy who kind
of got his start as a citizen journalist during occupy.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Really, he's one of these guys.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
All he does is he gets on he reads news articles,
he reads the headlines of news articles, he talks about
how we're all doomed to left wing terrorism or whatever,
and then he makes millions of dollars. He's a frustrating
individual to say the least, but he doesn't come cheap.
And Hansen also doesn't come cheap. Dave Rubin is not
an inexpensive person to bring onto your team. So it
(03:28):
was kind of clear from the beginning there's a lot
of money behind this thing that seems to have come
out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Whose money is it?
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And that is what the federal government's been trying to
figure out. And we have now a better indication on
where all of these kind of right wing content firms,
or at least this one who is employing some very
unfortant people, where they are getting some of their money from.
Because there's a lot of money flying around this space.
Lots of these guys are obviously filled by like fossil
fuel billionaires.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
You can look at like the early funding for the
Daily Wired that has a lot of money, but for this,
for this smaller, kind of lesser known company, how are
they paying one hundred thousand dollars per episode to these guys?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And it's also the Daily Wire definitely started inorganically by
getting a lot of fossil fuel money pumped into it.
But one thing you have to hand it to them
is they built a business that is a functional business, right,
they are now profitable in their own regard or at
least were there's some evidence their traffic collapsed recently, but
you saw you saw them have a growth curve that
(04:29):
looked pretty organic for a media organization, which you didn't
see with Tenant.
Speaker 6 (04:34):
No, no.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And it seems the only way to actually pay these
millions and millions of dollars to all these people is
if you are actually the government of Russia who is
starting covert operations that's their words, not mine, to influence
the US election by like both talking about like Ukraine,
using these mouthpieces, but also just kind of so general division,
(04:57):
which seems to be kind of the main tactic. And
Robert elected to actually go through some of this GEZ
twenty three page indictment and kind of hopefully we can
find some of some of the some of the better
funnier little tidbits here, because there's a lot of interesting
information about kind of the inter workings of some of
these media groups and how exactly Timpoole was convinced by
(05:23):
a Russian agent.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yeah, a Russian agent pretending to be three different people.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Pretending to be some mysterious European billionaire.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So the document starts with some stuff that I had
been unaware, which is that you know, because Russia Today
is kind of the first large Russian government affiliated media
organization that has been like putting up propaganda in the
United States, and the FBI has been watching them like
a hawk. And so they quote hear from the editor
in chief of RT after the expanded Russian invasion in
(05:56):
February twenty twenty two when he describes Russia Today, which
has always argued that it's a legitimate news organization, as
an entire empire of covert projects designed to shape public
opinion in Western audiences. And one of these covert projects
it described as the funding of what we now know
is Tenant Media. Right, it's described in these documents because
(06:17):
their indictments is a Tennessee based online creation company, but
it's it can only be referring to Tenant Media.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
As employees have since admitted that yes, it is for
sure to Tenant Media.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yes, yes, there's no doubt about this. We're not like
reading into the what the FED said here at all.
So they spent over the course of about a year
ten million dollars I think it's actually was more like
nine point six, but ten million dollars basically just buying
these influencers oh my god. First off, things we could
do with ten million dollars yeah, oh oh, James, we'd
(06:49):
be sailing to me and Maar and on a pale
rocket launchers.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
The things that their military could do with ten billion dollars.
Sending dude to the front with ass off plates. Yeah,
it's anyway. Whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So the kind of key detail there is how much
they were making per one of these dog shit videos,
which is about one hundred thousand dollars per YouTube video.
That's what Tim was getting. I think Dave Rubin was
getting close to just half a million a month to
do like a weekly video. So when that is the
kind of money we're talking.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
About, and Tim was also being paid one hundred thousand
dollars per weekly video as well. He was making one
video a week, that was what he decided on his contract,
So he was breaking in at least four hundred thousand,
if not five hundred thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
Yeah, and then they had signing and download bonuses on
top of that.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Which is like even for them, is more than you
could get on YouTube for the kind of traffic that
they get. That is that is like the top one
percent of the top one percent of YouTube creators are
making money like that, and certainly no one with the
kind of views these teniviity is we're getting. So anyway, Garrison,
you've got a clip to play.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, here's a clip that's definitely a totally genuine opinion.
Not impacted by those one hundred thousand dollars of Tim
Poole talking about Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Trigger warning, most annoying man on earth.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country.
Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I
will stress again one of the greatest enemies of our
nation right now is Ukraine. They are expanding this war now,
don't get me wrong. I know you've got criminal elements
of the US government pushing them and guiding them and
(08:32):
telling them what to do. Ukraine is now accused a
German warrant issued for blowing up the nord Stream pipeline
in triggering this conflict. Ukraine is the greatest threat to
this nation and to the world. We should rescind all
funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we
(08:53):
should apologize to Russia.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Interesting, I wonder what would compel a man to say
that huis're curious.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
There's no way to know Garrison.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So since they publicly launched in November of last year,
Tenant Media posted almost two thousand videos that got about
sixteen million views. And sixteen million views is a lot
for a YouTube channel, but not if you've put out
two thousand videos. So again, that's what I mean when
I say, like, this is not the kind of audience
that you would get this kind of money organically for, right,
(09:23):
Like this is was obviously and I mentioned this because
this is obviously suspicious to the creators. You cannot be
Timpoole is not a smart man, but you cannot work
for YouTube the way that he has and not know
that something is fucked up with the money, just if.
Speaker 5 (09:39):
You're not a mental arithmetician like myself. That is eight
thousand views video. I made a video once about how
to use hiking polls, which has around that many views.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I have a video that I fucked up when filming
another video while I was reviewing products fifteen years ago
before anyone knew who I was that has more than
eight years Like, where's all money, Vladimir, Yeah, yeah, come on, Vladimir,
Like I'll there's a lot I'll do for half a
million dollars well.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And I think part of this as well is not
just trying to prop up tenants owned news itself. It's
making these specific content creators lives more comfortable, because the
better that these guys do. That's all that Russia is
like interested in, as alleged in this document, right, It's
that they just want to make sure that these guys
can can still talk about Ukraine as certainly as like
(10:26):
this like evil and how Russia is like the traditionalist
Christian empire and right wing resistance to globalist domination. But
in terms of like just wanting to amplify US domestic
divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core government
of Russia's interests in the ongoing war in Ukraine. As
said in the document, all they need to do is
just make sure these guys are having a lot of money,
(10:48):
so like their comfortable tenant doesn't need to be like
a successful media operation where like they're making more money
on YouTube than they're paying their influences.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
That's not the point.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
The point is just to give these guys a lot
of money to keep talking the way they're talking.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, what was also interesting to me, and this comes
from a wired article wired downloaded as many of these
videos as they could and then ran them through. This
is actually one of the journalistic uses for these large
language models. They ran them through like one of those
machine learning algorithms to just kind of look at how
often different subjects are mentioned, because no human being could
(11:21):
analyze that many videos with any kind of like speed, right,
And one thing they found is that Ukraine, which you
would imagine being the focus of a horrific war that
is bleeding Russia's military was mentioned about like a third
as often as transgender people. The vast majority of the
content was US culture war stuff right like woke is
(11:45):
much more of a focus than anything to do directly
with Russian military operations or Russian like government, like what
you would imagine, right, And the reason for that is
that they see it as number one, building a sense
of solidarity between American conservative and Russia, which is largely imaginary.
I'll be talking about this in an episode later, but like,
Russia is not the country a lot of conservatives in
(12:07):
the US think it is. But more to the point,
it's just sort of stoking division, right, rather than actually
needing to change American minds on Ukraine. In much of
a concerted way, like if you kind of keep them
ginned up and angry about everything the quote unquote Left
is doing, they will be against supporting Ukrainian resistance anyway, right,
(12:27):
And that's the bet the Russians made, very very astutely,
and it seems to be paying off for them. One
of the more interesting facts here is that one of
the primary contacts, this is one of the people who
has been indicted, who was working with you know, Pool
and these other creators, is an employee of Russia today
with the perfect spy name, Constantine Kalashnikov.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Just amazing stuff.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
How is that literally their day?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah? How do they not just change it?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
We call it a Kalashnikov because the guy's name was Kalashnikov.
Speaker 6 (13:01):
It's just lovely. It's just lovely.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It's breathtaking because if you put a character with that
name in a Bond film, everyone would be like, come on, man,
it's not nineteen sixty five anymore, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
But that that's just the person's actual name. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So they had a couple of fake personas within the company,
but this was a person who like directly talked to
the employees of people like Pool, the editors and whatnot
without disclosing that he worked at Russia. Today now there's
evidence that people who worked for some of these creators
in their discords, like Editors and whatnot, saw this as
(13:37):
deeply suspicious. Probably the most interesting came from when we
now know it was Tucker Carlson posted a video during
his trip in Moscow like where he was going to
a Russian grocery store to be like, look, Russia has
grocery stores. Everything's fine here. His editor in the discord
was like, this seems like a little much. What are
we doing here? Basically, and the statement made was along
(13:58):
the lines of like, you know, this is what the
people paying us want us to get out right, which
is clear evidence that people were aware of what they
were doing to some extent.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
At least among like the tenant media producers, there was
a growing awareness of what was actually going on. Obviously,
all of the on air talent still maintains that they
are the victims of an international conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
In a victim pays I guess.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Oh my god, and no, I think one of the
funniest parts is definitely this fake European businessman I believe
he's referred to as Edward Grengorian.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yes, it was very funny, but we'll talk about Edward.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Let's throw to ads first and then we'll get back
to this, and we're back Garrison. Let's talk about Edward.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
So in the document they talked about how Klashnikov, this
other RT person, as well as Tenants founders worked together
to deceive commentators wanted to who we believe are our
Timpool and Dave Rubin. The point was to let leverage
their existing audiences and license their videos they were already making.
So together the RT people and the Tenant founders tried
(15:20):
to trick Pool and who we believe is Ruben into
thinking that the person providing these one hundred thousand dollars
per episodes was a European businessman and private investor named
Edward Gregorian, which is a wonderful a wonderful fake name.
And this was not real person. This was a completely
(15:40):
fake person. At some point, I believe Dave Ruben or
commentator number one, requested that the founder provide like a
profile or an article.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, it was commentator too that wanted to know
more about quote, would like to know more about the company.
And who he will be working with.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Yeah, so they asked for like this, like one page
profile on like who this guy was, and this was
provided and he was described as an accomplished finance professional
who had various positions in Brussels and France at a
multinational bank, including the director of private banking division and
wealth management.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
The one page on this guy, who is supposedly their investor,
shows an obvious stock photo of a man on a
private jet with his face blurred out face bloods. Yeah,
that's what that looks real. Yeah, not sketchy at all.
This is this is an actual guy quote. Founder one
transmitted the Edward Gregorian profile to Commentator one, who is
(16:36):
either Pool or Ruben.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
We believe it's Reuben.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I think that one's Ruben because Tim wouldn't have asked
for more details, Honor. About May twelfth, twenty twenty three,
Founder one reported to Persona one that Commentator one had
a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the
reference to social justice. I think it may be because
that's usually a term used by liberals, but we're trying
to create a conservative network. Founder one suggested that Commentator
(16:59):
one and Edward could simply speak together to clarify the profile.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yes, and I know there was a secure call between
a Russian atent pretending to be mister Gregorian to Tempoole,
and allegedly this other call with commentator one, who we
think is Ruben. So there was like conversations between like
Rubin and Pool with people like further involved in the
(17:24):
actual like espionage parts of this and the actual like
you're talking to people affiliated with like Russian spies in
order to like sell this lie.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
I did find it very funny.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Where did you read the section where they sort of
did a forensic analysis of the three persona's email accounts. Yeah, no,
I'm not far up in doing it yet. So they
had three different personas, so all access from the same
I P address and had different presenting a three different individuals, right,
with three different email accounts. Obviously the DOJ has been
able to get access to those EMAT accounts, and they
(17:55):
found that the people using those email accounts made mistakes
in signing them. So one was supposed to come from
PERSONA three that they mistakenly signed to Edward Gregorian, and
another time PERSONA one sent a draft of an email
to PERSONA to two, which PERSONA two then copied and
pasted into an email like the object was extremely poor,
(18:16):
it would seem, and it didn't set anyone off to
kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Make that point in terms of, like what's happening to
these guys right now? What they've been indicted for is
violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Like, if you
are acting as the agent of a foreign government, you
have to register in the United States. You have a
freedom of speech, but you don't have freedom to create
propaganda for another government and pretend.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
That you're not right.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, and so you know, obviously one of the things
the Feds needed to indict them is evidence that they knew,
specifically they were being employed by the Russian government, Right
that like the Russians hadn't somehow snuck money to the
people who founded Tenant Media.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And so at one point Founder two gets on the
Investor Discord channel to submit one of the influencers, I
think it's Rubens invoices to PERSONA one and press for
payment of those invoices. On September eleventh, twenty twenty three,
never forget, at approximately eight oh seven pm Central Time,
Founder two wrote in that discord channel. Today marks two
(19:14):
weeks since I submitted the invoice for August. Any idea
for the delay. We are signing the large contracts. We
need to be certain we will get the funding to
pay these people. While waiting for a response, they searched
for the current time in Moscow. So jess unbelievable opsec
like giving the government absolute knowledge of intent.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I mean similarly, earlier on in the document quote in
their private respondence while working directly for URT pursue into
Founder one's written contract, Founder one and Founder two regularly
referred to their sponsor as the Russians and for exact honor.
About May twelfth, twenty twenty one, Founder two message Founder
one on discord, quote, so we're billing the Russians from
the corporation, right honor. About May twenty second, Founder one
(20:01):
message Founder two on discord. Also, the Russians paid, so
we're good to build them for the second month. I
guess nailed it on her. About June second, Founder one
message Founder two on Discord, Also, I say we build
the Russians for the last month, once we're done.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
The extra offense. I wonder if they knew they were
working for the Russian government.
Speaker 6 (20:20):
There's a lot more that's just like this.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
They constantly referred to the source of their income, at
least to each other as quote unquote the Russians. And
then in like outreach to like talent, which is, you know,
a generous word to refer to Timpoole and others, they
were a little bit more vague, but they certainly made
kind of coy references to it in their producer discord beautiful.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Well, yeah, so, I mean the big question here with
all of this is, like, did any of these major
right wing media figures who have like they got hired
in part because they were already doing the job the
Russians wanted them doing, you know, building up this kind
of hatred that exists on the right over the idea
of funding Ukraine and Ukrainian resistance to the Russian war machine.
(21:06):
Like all of that kind of stuff is like why
these people got brought on anyway. Tim Poole has just
kind of been one of the most reflexively anti Ukraine
voices in conservative media, and Ruben is very effective at
getting Americans to hate other Americans, Like he's one of
the big kind of anti trans culture warriors out there.
Did O Hansen Like that's why they wanted these guys
(21:28):
like they wanted to encourage them basically to keep it up.
And you know, the question then is what did these
guys know and when did they know it? And the
bigger question because I have my suspicions, and my suspicions
are a lot and immediately, but none of that is
in this indictment obviously. And the big question then is
(21:48):
is the federal government going to attempt to prove anything
like do they want to actually go after these guys?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
My guess is not, because there very rarely are consequences
for these people. But I'm curious to what y'all think.
Speaker 6 (22:01):
No, it's it's it seems not.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I'm both both Pool and I think three others have
made statements saying that they've been contacted by the FBI
as a potential victim of a crime and that they
will be happy to assist the FBI investigating this matter.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Now, that doesn't mean the FBI isn't necessarily looking into them,
because that's all which the FBI would use if they
suspected them. But yeah, my guess is that they lawyered up.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Absolutely. It was funny both in there in Betty Johnson's
and Timpole's immediate statements. They called this elk DOJ indictment,
which is not true. It was not leaked, it was
just unsealed.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, they just arrested people. Yeah, I'm very sure there's
a press release.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
Like Also, one of the final posts from Tenant Media,
I was talking about how this woman named Lauren's son
was charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese
Communist Party. Quote he or she is talking about DEI?
Why would the Chinese government want to push a DEI
in America?
Speaker 5 (22:55):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Yeah, this is This is I think one of one
of the final Twitter posts before their account got taken down.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, beautiful. Their Rumble account is still live and kicking. Yeah.
Oh thank goodness that out.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
Also, can we talk about their graphic design just for
a moment, because it is dog shit? Yeah, Tenant Mediums,
Tenant Yeah, like, have you I don't know, have you?
Have you been on their Rumble account? Garrison, you know,
I can't.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
I can't say I have been on their Rumble account
as of as of recent.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The last time I looked at Rumble it was their
booth at the rnc OW.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Let me tell you they're back and genuinely some of
the most like deranged. It's just it's extremely busy, it's
very nineties like, it's a lot of bright colors.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
The clearest indication to me that this was absolutely a
Russian op is that the company described itself as quote
a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political
and cultural issues.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Definitely Russians. Definitely Russians.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
You're like, oh, I wonder who wrote that? Who whatever?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Describe themselves.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Tim Poole had never even seen the word head of
Redox before.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Yeah, it's crazy, it's wild.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
Yeah, they put multipolar into a theosaurus and that's what
they came up with.
Speaker 6 (24:11):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
It is interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
One of the things in this indictment that I did
find kind of worth talking about is that it specifically
notes that folks at Russia Today when they were because
they were largely deplatformed after the expanded Russian invasion in
twenty twenty two early twenty twenty two, and the indictment
quotes the editor in chief of Russia Today being like,
but it's fine because we were able to rebuild our
(24:33):
following on Twitter. So I don't know if you, just
in case you had any questions about like what Elon
Musk's reforms at Twitter have accomplished. One of them is
that we should probably roll to ads again. And then, Garrison,
you had a very fun document you wanted to take.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
Us through, yes to kind of talk about why they
might be doing some of this. There was one other
document that was unsealed that kind of kind of sheds
a light on Russia's exact focus on influencing US politics.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Well, that's great, speaking of influencing US politics. Our advertisers
probably don't.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
There's another document called Exhibit nine to A, which is
originally in Russian and this translated Coffee is provided in
this PDF, and this appears to be some kind of
instructional manual for why exactly people are going about this,
why exactly is Tim Poole and all these others getting
(25:40):
paid to talk about what they talk about, And then
it also kind of explains like tactics and like how
to actually go about it. So the first bit of
this of this document, they just start talking about like
the US two party system, which is really funny, and
they primarily explain the two party systems differences as being
like the way that they affect that the US political
(26:01):
party B or Democratic Party includes people of color and
quote unquote supporters of affirmative action and reverse discrimination, i e.
Infringement on the rights of the white population of the
United States. And then meanwhile, the Republican Party are victims
of discrimination by people of color unquote. So that's how
they kind of frame the US two party system is
(26:22):
that there's these poor white people being oppressed by wokeism.
They end this little introduction on the two party system
by saying, quote, a key characteristic of the American media
is it skew towards the Democratic Party's influence. While society
is split between supporters of the new globalist socialism and
traditional values, the media is democrat by over seventy five percent.
(26:43):
Situation for the Republicans is made complicated by the censorship
on social media and Democrats oriented new media. So some
kind of weird phrasing there because it is being translated
from Russian. But they're talking about how liberalism is inherently
biased in media and that's something that promoted while being
racist and being a Republican is something that is harder
(27:05):
to get paid for by big media to talk about.
And that's why they have this campaign, which they title
Gorilla media campaign in the United States. They justify this
by saying that there is no pro Russian and or
putin mainstream politicians or succinctly large numbers of influencers and voters,
(27:25):
and this is one of the things they're trying to do.
Another quote is that Americans are quote dissatisfied by the
dramatic decline and center of living and large expenditures of
offensive policy in the United States, in Europe and Ukraine.
They are afraid of losing the American way of life
in the American dream. It is these sentiments that should
be exploited in the course of an information campaign in
(27:47):
the United States. Smart The campaign topics used in their
Gorilla Media campaign are included here. The first ones encroaching
universal poverty. Number two is the risk of job loss
for white Americans, for people of color, perverts and disabled,
constant lies of the Democratic Party administration, the threat of
(28:07):
crime coming from people of color and immigrants, including new
immigrants from Ukraine. Overspending on foreign policy at the expense
of interests of white US citizens. Constant lies to the
voters by the Democrats in power. Last, but not least
America is suffering a defeat despite liberals' efforts. We are
being drawn into the water. Our guys will die in Ukraine.
(28:31):
The target audience of their campaign is listed as Republican voters,
Donald Trump supporters, supporters of quote traditional family values, white
Americans representing the lower and middle class.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It's frustrating
that it is working. Yeah, to be quite frank, it's
exactly what the Russiagate conspiracy theorists have been saying for years. Unfortunately, Yeah, unfortunately,
and like a shitload of people on the left have
just been mocking them endlessly, in part because they've bought
a lot of this propaganda.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
And this is certainly different from the way they were
going about it in twenty sixteen, right, And this isn't
absolutely yeah, like this, this isn't the same like Facebook
stuff they're doing, although Tenant did did have Facebook accounts.
These are like weaponizing these people that have gotten big
on YouTube and other platforms for talking about the same
type of things that Russia kind of wants them to
talk about, and it's just making sure that they have
the ability to do so. Kind of Lastly, in this
(29:26):
information doc They talk about kind of like where you
can spread this disinformation, It says here quote on Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube. We need to create multiple perishable accounts, primarily
for the work with comments. Websites should serve as the
sources of information for dissemination and for video content YouTube
accounts with a relatively small number of subscribers and commentators unquote.
(29:47):
The list of information products can be disseminated includes texts
of posts, comments on social media, memes including cariactures and collages,
and video content including news stories in the Fox News style.
They then propose creating a quote unquote project office to
run this style of like media campaign. This consists of
(30:09):
three segments monitoring US media and social media accounts of
Republican politicians, a text factor with a minimum of five
to four main topic based recommendations including about ten basic
posts on social media and forty to sixty comments, and
then managing an editorial office with a daily output of
(30:29):
three to four pictures and memes, and a video editorial
office with a daily output of three to four videos
per day.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
In order for this work to be effective, you need
to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum
of realistic information. At the same time, you should continuously
repeat that this is what's really happening, but the official
media will never tell you about it or show it
to you.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
So, I mean, like part of what's frustrating about this
number one is just like they clearly have watched Alex Jones,
and like, I've learned a great deal from how he's
done this, which, unfortunately something Alex used to claim about putin.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
That fuck maybe he was right.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
But the bigger, more frustrating point to me is that like, oh,
they didn't need to do any of this at all,
Like this was all working just fine without them directly
getting involved.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
This way, I kind of am intro.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
I think it's probably just a reaction to the fact
that they had a lot of their more traditional stuff
get deplatformed after February twenty twenty two. Yeah, but like
this was all stuff the right was doing organically in
their media without Russian money.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
They didn't need this.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
They certainly are trying to kind of rebuild some of
their like directabilities influence after like RT got deplatformed. The
other part that's interesting to me is because like this
indictment focuses on like Tenet media as being kind of
one of these video editorial offices that with a daily
output of three to four videos a day. Like that
that's what this that's what this kind of guy to describes,
That's what tenant is this evidence. Stock also talks about
(31:57):
how like they're also just like faking engagement, getting like
sixty comments per day on various social media posts on
political topics. So that also like points towards like a
lot of people like driving like discussions and trying to
like increase the actual like visibility and engagement is being
boosted by this like non authentic interference. A lot of
(32:18):
videos will go viral not just because they had a
lot of people watch them initially, it's because they have
a lot of engagement in like the comments, and that's
what's going to push something to actually show up more
people's feats. Like that is how Twitter currently works. There's
a degree to which that's how things work on YouTube.
So it's also just trying to to try to like
engineer virality by faking a certain amount of engagement. Yeah,
(32:40):
there's also like that that degree of like interference beyond
just actually you know, paying for Tim Poole to talk
about Ukraine and talk about how gay people are evil
once a week.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I think that's probably all we've got to say about
this for right now. This is not the most surprising
news in the world. It is good that it's embarrassing
some of these guys.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I think it's actually going to hurt their listenership at all.
The people who listen to them don't really care.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah, they'll lie out of it.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
Yeah, they'll find some way to bit and to make
themselves the victim out of it.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
They will not have any reflection that there was a
whole Russian operation to identify like influencers to scout for
that would serve Russia's purposes. That they will never reflect
on why they specifically were scouted for. No, Yeah, they
will never reflect that. The only bit of like, the
only bit of hesitation that they had to take this
(33:32):
money was that the profile for the think businessman mentioned
to social justice. That was the only thing that they
like protested. That's the only thing that they actually wanted
to look further into was the fact that he listed
social justice is something he cares about, and not the
fact that he just doesn't exist at all.
Speaker 6 (33:47):
This is a completely fake person.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
They were able to flag social justice but not flag
that he just did not exist.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
It.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
None of this will cause any kind of recollection because
these guys don't care. Like the reason why they say
what they say is because they can make five hundred
thousand dollar a month extra saying it. So imagine how
much money they're already making. Yeah, Like that explains why
they're doing what they're doing. Like they don't care what
they say anymore. They make such a ridiculous amount of
money that it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, and that's what it's always been about. Like they
have never believed in anything.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, they don't need to like reflect on any of
this because they're still making tons of money. They're making
slightly less than they used to now that Russia's not
paying them, but they are still making tons especially like
if this is what they thought like the going price was,
like they suggested these amounts, like they this is like
the regular price for them, and that kind of points
towards how much money is flying around this right wing
medio ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Yep, great good stuff.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
Yeah, the last couple of videos were focusing on this
ridiculous lie that migrant's taken over an apartment complex in Colorado,
Like all this shit that just isn't true that they've
been able to make true. I don't know, it's so frustrating.
I find it's so frustrating. Also, how like Pool has
been able to run this line, Like the media won't
tell you this because there are things that legitimately our
(35:04):
neoliberal establishment media completely ignores, and like that leaves the
door open for this kind of shit, and as a result,
people can fill that space with lies, as we're seeing here.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Well, so the next time you get contacted by a
shady man on WhatsApp to pay you five hundred thousand
dollars about talking about how gay people are evil, you
might want to check to see if he's actually a
Russian agent first. You just you might want to do
a little a little bit of work.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, they have to tell you. It's like cops. You
just ask him that they have to tell you, you
know what, Just send him my way. That's exciting new
content news for you, guys.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
I will not get paid by Russia to lie. I
might get paid by like Sweden, you know, to like
advance Swedish interests.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Maybe there's a number of most countries I would lie for.
Besides that aren't Russia. Yeah, would I would lie for
like Japan? Probably No, that could get dark.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Actually yeah, yeah, I leave that one out.
Speaker 6 (36:01):
Bro Sweden, Sweden's perfect, No, it's scarce.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I think you're underestimating the kind of shit Sweden gets
up to.
Speaker 6 (36:07):
Oh no, they're certainly evil. They're certainly evil.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
But in terms of like a very like milk toast
country to get paid to increase their foreign interest, then
I think Sweden's about as good as you're gonna get.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
Like, come on, like hungry, come on, come.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
On, Switzerland.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
You know all the Switzerland you would you would quickly
get implicated, but they could pay.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
All the financial all the financial price.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
Yeah, Robert and I received material benefits from the Burmese PDF.
We both had a nice lunch from them, and that
has been what we've done all our coverage. It's time
for us to come clean now.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
We did, although you did get very sick afterwards, sonvably sick,
and you lucked me out of the toilet, So yeah,
that was pretty funny.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
What it's time anyway, Rip Tenant Media, you were a
big one.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 6 (37:20):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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