This is part of the bigger and separate, but related, topic of Russian influence over Western media for at least 15 years (we're all familiar with the sudden influx of 5-7000 commenters with pro-Russian interest posts in comment sections of European news channels/sites that normally only get 15-50 respondents per article/video). I'll post it here, but it's probably big enough to be a separate thread.

A number of social media influencer podcasters have been busted as part of a foreign influence scheme by the Kremlin to spread pro-Putin/Moscow propaganda. This includes anti-Ukraine propaganda to US audiences in order to turn opinions against Ukraine. They were on Moscow's payroll for around 400,000 USD per month for four videos (or 100K per video), which is approximately 5 million USD per year. More for the bigger influencers, as the three biggest of the influencers were paid 8.7M USD each. What's even weirder about this, is apparently one of the influencers wasn't even a real person, but fabricated by Russia under the name of Eduard Grigoriann - a note about how AI will probably be used in the future if left unregulated and without sufficient methods of exposure.

Six Russian assets named: Lauren Southern, David Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Taylor Hansen, and Matt Christiansen.

They claimed they were duped - but are likely lying to cover their asses. They were caught being paid to create anti-Ukrainian and pro-Moscow content. Who else would they think is paying them loads of money to spread Moscow's misinformation and anti-Ukrainian propaganda? Also, at least some of these influencers had gone to Moscow meet with high ranking Russists in the past; Lauren Southern had meetings with Alexandr Dugin - the architect of the current Russist culture; he is also called "Putin's Brain".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crrlv7jdnq8o
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/well-known-right-wing-influencers-duped-to-work-for-covert-russian-operation-u-s-prosecutors-say

And even if we buy that morons like Tim Pool were unaware, what does that say about their "journalistic" integrity? (Lmfao at labelling Tim Pool as a journalist though). Just shows that they accepted hundreds of thousands of $ to spew bullshit propaganda and they couldn't even be bothered to check their sources validity or the validity of what they were saying.

You'd get the same level of journalism from a parrot which is made to repeat words in a sentence.

Tim Pool straight up labelled Ukraine as the biggest threat to America and said the war began because of the NordStream attack, an attack which happened half a year after the war began, you don't have to be a genius to know that an event which happened after a war began is not what caused a war to start. Someone this fucking dumb has no right to be a journalist and talking about world events.

What is the legal penalty for collaborating with hostile foreign agents?
At one point it was life in prison, but my only source to go on this is the 1946 Hitchcock film Notorious :D

From what I've read, the USA is only going after those who distributed the money, so Tim Pool and the like will be safe because they only received the money and claim "they didn't know" which is probably bullshit but his bosses are likely fucked.

If America was at war with Russia? Probably treason, Lol.

Mildred Gillars - Wikipedia

But since America isn't at war with Russia, I don't know. Probably something along the lines of election interference.

I've seen some of this, i'm on a Russian/Ukrainian war group on FB, and there are a lot of pro-Russian africans in there.  And you can tell that they don't even like Russia, they do this pro-russia shit for a living.  It's a fun group, everybody talks shit about the side that they don't like lmao

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1008058079797176

Likely nothing. As Ryuu said, it may have been different if the US was in an active and direct conflict with Russia, but at present they are not, so whilst we may mock them as being less than journalists they likely can claim right the disseminate their pro-Russia stories under the First amendment. Even the election interference one is likely to be a hard-sell as whilst I believe there is a law about election candidates getting foreign funding I don’t think any of these people are working for a candidate in an official capacity.

That will be why the US is going after the financiers, as they wouldn’t have such protection.

There you, use 2nd and 3rd parties and everyone has plausible deniability