Friday Round Up! 9/7/24

Russia, Russia, Russia. It's always Russia.

The Round Up is back! It was great to have a little break to breathe and catch up before the start of the new school year. And good timing, because the legal news is just starting to pick up again.

There was a lot of Trump news — appeals in his E. Jean Carroll case, some movement in the January 6 case, the delay of his sentencing in the Manhattan case — but what I have been focused on is the indictment of Konstiantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, two Russian nationals and RT employees who were directing and controlling the editorial content of a U.S.-based media company — since revealed to be Tenet Media — on behalf of Russia in an attempt to influence voters before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The company employed two producers and six right-wing media influencers who pushed out videos and other content advancing Russia’s talking points, making significant profits (to the tune of several million dollars a year) in the process.

The indictment, which you can read here, reveals a complex structure, and definitely an escalation compared to previous Russian election interference efforts. My Substack course on disinformation focuses on Russia’s goals and tactics (it’s never too late to enroll!), and I’ve removed the paywall of a few of my relevant posts related to Russian election interference in previous years if you want to check them out. In Class 20 we looked at how the Internet Research Agency deployed social media trolls before the 2016 election (and I drilled down in Class 23 on how this impacted Black voters the most). In Class 22 we looked at Russia’s Project Lakhta, an influence operation before the 2018 midterms, which seeded narratives like support for a “civil war” in America. And in Class 25 I offered my report card on how well we are doing heading into this year’s presidential election.

As the report card notes, we’re getting better at countering Russian (and other countries’) influence operations. But, Russia is learning too, as the below diagram — which I spent all morning making — indicates. Russia has now gone from simply having fake accounts and trolls online to actually funding a content creation company and bringing domestic U.S. influencers onto its payroll. At least based on the indictment, the influencers (Commentators 1-6), who have since been revealed to include right-wing You Tube stars like Tim Poole and Benny Johnson, were duped and/or failed to perform basic due diligence on the source of their funds. The media company’s founders, Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan (Founders 1 & 2), were apparently witting participants in the scheme but haven’t been charged — suggesting that they have been cooperating with prosecutors behind the scenes (former prosecutor Andrew Weismann noted on Twitter/X that he believed they were charged a while ago, under seal, and then flipped). Separately, the Justice Department also seized 32 internet domains being used by Russia to impersonate legitimate U.S. news outlets, like The Washington Post, to dupe American audience.

The Russian defendants have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The money laundering charge stems from the fact that Russia funneled close to $10 million into the media company using a series of shell companies to conceal the source. And regarding FARA, because the media company was receiving about 90% of its funding from a foreign principal — Russia — and was under the direction and control of Russian state-controlled individuals, it is considered a foreign agent under U.S. law. Still, it’s notable that DOJ took this step because in general, the U.S. is loathe to go after media and journalists, even if they are in violation of FARA, because that can itself be propagandized and weaponized by foreign regimes as constituting “censorship".” (I wrote more about FARA, and what we can and can’t do to counter propaganda, in Class 3.)

I’ll be unpacking more about the mechanics of this scheme for

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

next week (I’ll republish that on my Substack the following week), so stay tuned! I’ll also be discussing it with Renato in our upcoming pod. And speaking of the podcast, we have switched distributors and our new episodes will be dropping on Mondays, rather than Fridays. Which means that the You Tube version that I include in my round up will be a few days old, as is this one, in which we discussed some of the latest moves by Special Counsel Jack Smith:

NEW! Freedom Academy Book Club Selection:

I’m soooooo excited that my friend and colleague, Yale Professor Jason Stanley, will join The Freedom Academy to discuss his latest book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future (which will be released on September 10)! For those who have been in my Substack course, you know that I often refer to Professor Stanley’s last book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (which is a MUST READ). We’ll have this book discussion right before the election, to remind us what’s at stake — so you have plenty of time to order and read before then. The Freedom Academy Book Club discussions are open to all paid subscribers and recordings of the talks are posted after in case you can’t make it live!

My articles this week:

I won’t be including my CAFE Notes in my round ups anymore since I am co-publishing them directly on this Substack! Go to the archives to catch the last two.

• Though I wrote this one a while ago, here is a Just Security piece I wrote about Russian election interference in local elections and how they represent an evolution in their tactics

Noteworthy clips this week:

A couple of clips on the wrangling in the courts about President Biden’s second attempt at addressing student loan debt, and the copyright bench slap against Trump for using unlicensed music at his rallies:

Upcoming events:

• Zoom Office Hours, Friday, September 27, 9-10 a.m. We’ll discuss the latest. Zoom link will be sent three hours before the discussion. This will not be recorded.

  I’ll be getting more speakers lined up for this fall, so stay tuned!