The Departments of Justice, State and Treasury announced yesterday a joint effort to use sanctions and criminal charges against what the Biden administration says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election. Via NBC News:
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced charges against two employees of the Russian-backed media network RT accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act in an indictment unsealed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.
"The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country's free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda," Garland said.
While the indictment redacted the names of political parties and candidates, it was clear through the documents that the Russians sought to bolster Republican former President Donald Trump and to harm Democratic efforts — who likely would have been Joe Biden at the time.
Garland accused Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva of implementing a nearly $10 million scheme to hire a Tennessee-based company to publish and disseminate pro-Russian content. That company then contracted with U.S.-based social media influencers to share content on their platforms. The information was "often consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine," the attorney general said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers their ties to RT and the Russian government. Instead, they claimed that the company was sponsored by a private investor, but that private investor was a fictitious persona."
They're talking about Tenet Media, associated with Tim Pool and other familiar names:
