Elon Musk, currently the world's richest person, repeatedly used his influential X platform — which he bought as Twitter in 2022 — to promote posts from a right-wing media company that was allegedly peddling Russian propaganda in exchange for cash from Moscow.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped a bombshell indictment yesterday alleging that the Russian state-owned media organization RT secretly funneled about $10 million into a Tennessee-based media network that produced videos for and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to several right-wing social media influencers with massive digital footprints. The indictment didn't name the American company at the heart of the covert influence campaign, but as multiple outlets have reported, details make it obvious they're talking about a venture called Tenet Media.

And Musk, who has spiraled deeply into conspiratorial, red-pilled far-right politics, has repeatedly engaged with and boosted content published directly by Tenet Media — not to mention countless posts created and published by the influencers who were cashing Tenet paychecks.

Tenet's founders went unnamed in the indictment, but they're the married conservative social media personalities Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. Donovan is somewhat less known, but Chen, who has a large following on social media, hosted a show on Glenn Beck's Blaze TV — until she got fired in the wake of the allegations — and is a contributor for Turning Point USA, the Christian Nationalist political organization that focuses on advancing conservative ideas among high school and college-aged kids.

According to the DOJ filing, the couple was aware that they were being funneled cash by Russian nationals — they were working directly with two Russian RT employees, both of whom are reportedly at large — but intentionally failed to disclose that relationship to the American government, as is required by US law.

The Tenet founders are further accused of actively working to conceal their relationship to Russia and RT from the right-wing influencers they employed, who collectively boast millions of followers across X, Instagram, YouTube, and other media-sharing platforms. What's more, the RT employees from whom Chen and Donovan were taking checks were involved in the editorial process for much of the content shared by Tenet, according to the indictment.

Armed with the slogan "fearless voices live here," content created and boosted by Tenet and its band of influencers ranges from general anti-woke, culture-warring talking points to overtly anti-Ukraine messaging often centered on US and Western funding for the war in Ukraine.

Tenet used its main account to share short, contextless video clips, which generally fall under the umbrella of reactionary conservative clickbait. Musk responded to one of these clickbait videos as recently as 11 days ago, writing a characteristic "!!" in response to a clip that was allegedly cut from a leaked NASA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training video — a favorite issue for the X owner, who has claimed without evidence that corporate diversity efforts are "racist" against white people.

The billionaire also in July shared a Tenet post downplaying former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump's promise to attendees of a Turning Point USA event that in "four years, you don't have to vote again."

Musk's engagement with Tenet's influence is more overt among the media company's "talent," a cohort of conservative figures that includes posters, podcasters, and YouTubers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern, among others.

Ever the reply guy, Musk has boosted and chimed in on posts from Tenet-represented voices about everything from anti-trans rhetoric to fearmongering around election fraud and voting rights to frequent attacks against the "media."

"At dinner listening to the people beside me discuss the Trump / Elon space," reads one August X post from Southern, which discussed Musk's meandering, glitch-plagued conversation with the former president that aired on X last month. "I don't think y'all understand how cooked the average mind is."

"Anyone who thinks the media is real is an idiot," Musk — who in that moment was actively engaging with a media personality allegedly unknowingly in business with a media company cashing checks from Moscow as part of a coordinated Russian influence campaign — responded.

Musk has somewhat commented on the DOJ's allegations, responding "yeah" to a post from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro arguing that the Tenet-paid influencers "aren't the issue here" due to their lack of knowledge of Russian involvement. Some Tenet creators have yet to comment; those who have, including Pool and Johnson, have maintained that they were the real victims and affirmed their ignorance about the Russia links.

According to the indictment, at least two of the unwitting commentators were under the impression that Tenet's investment was coming from a fabricated European banker named "Eduard Grigoriann." When one pundit asked for more information about Grigoriann, they were directed to a LinkedIn page for a company called "Viewpoint Productions." As Wired points out, the alleged production company's scant LinkedIn page links only to a hilariously basic "Wordpress site with a default introduction in French and the name of the company misspelled."

And these folks weren't getting paid in pennies. According to the indictment, one influencer was getting paid as much as $400,000 per month — before bonuses — to make just four videos a week.

In other words, according to the DOJ, it's true that these influencers didn't realize their lucrative content deals were paid for by an adversarial state. But their blind eyes turned to "Grigoriann" and "his" allegedly multimillion-deep pockets also signal that they were carefully not asking any critical questions about where the money was coming from.

And meanwhile Musk, while both directly and indirectly boosting the divisive partisan content flowing from Russian-funded influence efforts, has been publicly eating Tenet's messaging up.

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