All roads lead to Russia. Again?

1. 69

   IslandBitesposted 10 months ago

   DOJ charges former 2016 Trump campaign adviser over his work for sanctioned Russian TV
   
   The Justice Department has charged a Russian-born U.S. citizen and former adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with working for a sanctioned Russian state television network and laundering the proceeds.
   
   Indictments announced Thursday allege that Dimitri Simes and his wife received over $1 million dollars and a personal car and driver in exchange for work they did for Russia’s Channel One since June 2022. The network was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
   
   The couple faces 20 years in prison for each count if convicted. They left the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and are now believed to be in Russia, the justice department said.
   
   “Joe Biden and his stooges are impotent cowards,” wrote Dimitri Simes Jr, their son, on X. “Our family is safe and sound in Russia. We will not be intimidated. In fact, we’re only going to get louder. Stay tuned!”
   
   Simes and the Washington think tank he led, the Center for the National Interest, figured prominently in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
   
   The indictments come at a time of renewed concern about Russian efforts to meddle with the upcoming U.S. election using online disinformation and propaganda. These new allegations against Simes come one day after the US treasury department sanctioned Margarita Simonyan, who works for the state-controlled broadcaster RT, and nine other employees for running a covert disinformation network in the US that included well-known conservative American influencers who unwittingly took millions of dollars in Kremlin cash.
   
   https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/d … russian-tv
   
   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art … laundering

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2. 69

   IslandBitesposted 10 months ago

   How some of the internet's most popular pro-Trump pundits ended up as paid messengers for Russian propaganda
   
   The video introducing Tenet Media hit many common conservative tropes: Mainstream media couldn’t be trusted. Free speech was under attack. Independent and uncensored voices were sorely needed.
   
   It featured the six commentators who would be the faces of the operation, already some of the most-followed voices in the increasingly crowded and influential world of online conservative punditry.
   
   Prosecutors alleged two employees of the Russia-backed media network RT funneled almost $10 million to six commentators through a company that appears to be Tenet.
   Tenet’s many videos combined with details from the government’s two indictments illustrate how the company amplified conservatives who had already embraced many talking points favored by former President Donald Trump and Russia, in line with the country’s broader propaganda goals. The alleged tactics would represent an evolution in Russia’s previous attempts to meddle with American voters’ perceptions of an upcoming election, marked in 2016 by crude but effective text posts on Twitter and Facebook. With Tenet, Russia appears to have updated a decades-old strategy of laundering propaganda through seemingly independent actors by targeting some of the most popular creators of the polarized U.S. political system. 
   
   Five of those commentators have issued statements, some declaring themselves the victims and each saying that they were not knowingly part of the Russian scheme. The sixth, Southern, has not issued a statement or responded to requests for comment from NBC News. The six commentators did not respond to questions Thursday on how they believed they were deceived and whether they plan to give up the money.
   
   On Thursday, the conservative media company Blaze Media said it had terminated its contract with the YouTuber Lauren Chen. Chen and her husband founded Tenet Media, which received as much as $10m from intermediaries to the Russian government, according to the justice department indictment and US media reports, and then paid out large sums of money to conservative figures to produce online videos meant to influence the 2024 election. The American influencers and media personalities acted unwittingly, according to the indictment.
   
   YouTube deleted Tenet's channel on Thursday. A spokesperson told NBC News: “Following an indictment from the US Department of Justice and after careful review, we are terminating the Tenet Media channel and four channels operated by its owner Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”
   
   https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/i … rcna169803

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   1. 77

      Castlepalomaposted 10 months agoin reply to this

      Generally it's an economic world war going on between east and west or BRICS and NATO. Russia was not strong enough to stop 9 NATO countries  boarding on Russia  and Ukraine is the last straw to prevent NATO. US has disrespect Russia for 100 years and sanctions them on everything.
      
      And finally Russia has claimed US their enemy, ...what patients.   Russia has no military bases in Canada  or Mexico.  The greatest push back from the east is Western Centro banking , fiat currency and pedro dollars.  All US has to offer is corporaism  like BlackRock, banks and military bases. Saudi Arabia canceled US currency and now US blames them for 9/11., after 24 years.
      
      Africa  continent is joining BRICS and using soldiers from Africa and North Korea. . China and Russia are growing  and the west is in decline and the west doesn't like that.
      
      US is not going to totally collapse without a huge Blast. .

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3. 69

   IslandBitesposted 10 months ago

   Russian Oligarchs’ Investments in Elon Musk’s X Raise Questions About Potential Putin Connections
   
   Elon Musk faces questions about his ties to two Russian oligarchs after a court document revealed investors in the billionaire’s acquisition of Twitter, now X.
   
   The reveal came after a federal court forced Musk to disclose shareholders for X as part of the ongoing legal battle with former Twitter employees claiming Musk violated their arbitration agreements by withholding certain payments after he bought the social media platform for $44 billion.
   
   Among the investors, venture capital firm 8VC is drawing criticism for its ties to Denis Aven and Jack Moszkowicz, the sons of Russian oligarchs Petr Aven and Vadim Moszkowicz. Both have strong political and economic ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both men have also been subject to Western sanctions due to their associations with the Kremlin amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
   
   Since his acquisition of the platform, Musk has been outspoken regarding his views of Russia as well as the ongoing war, at times calling for the U.S. government to withhold aid to Ukraine.
   
   https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-e … 15671.html

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