Duped? How? By getting paid?
Oopsie I was just so confused by this giant bag of cash!
I’m sure at least some of them truly believed they were worth more than shit
Be nice to me, I’M the victim here!
Whenn your livelihood depends on not noticing something, you’d be amazed how oblivious some people can be.
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
TN based. So again, “duped”.
By getting paid
More like bribed out of their minds. They absolutely KNEW that what they were doing wasn’t worth a fraction of the money was handed to them.
What they’re doing isn’t worth a monkey’s fruity fart. But I’m sure they have senses of entitlement that are off the scale.
How does one dupe the willing?
Maybe they mean dupe as in duplicate, as in doubling the value of their bank account.
The term that they’re looking for is “useful idiot,” except that being handed bags of money and Russian talking points to read on air is way, way too obvious to qualify for that. “Traitorous sleazebag,” maybe. “Willfully blind co-conspirator” if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.
God i hate popular media - always trying to change the narrative with these misleading headlines.
Being a paid russian asset isn’t being duped. I hope those things rot in prison.
Duped. Yes, of course. That’s it. 😏
To be fair. I don’t think it’s impossible that some of these were so stupid to even realize that the ones paying them were Russian.
They absolutely knew. There’s a note about them googling “time in Moscow” when their contact wasn’t replying, to see when they’d wake up and come back to work.
I’m sure 99+% of them knew, but I’m not ruling out someone waking up to: “what? But the company that was paying me millions to convince people that Ukraine was the enemy was based in Illinois! There’s no way they they were Russian”. Every time I underestimate the stupidity of people they tend to surprise me, so I no longer do.
They haven’t been charged.
The idea that doing something with someone who turns out to be a foreign asset makes you a conspirator is a bit ridiculous. I don’t see anyone in this community accusing Kathy Hochul of being a Chinese asset since she’s a Democrat, but accusing her of that would be ridiculous too. She probably didn’t know that her aide was a Chinese agent.
I mean, Kathy Hochul was clearly not unwitting in her money laundering… so if your comparison is to say these right-wing influencers were completely aware of their Russian ties and were not duped at all, I am down with that.
Duped! Completely fooled! Hoodwinked! Who could have seen that coming??
thanks for the money…
Bamboozled! Foisted! Smeckledorfed!
The coordinated messaging all emphasizing how this was accidental and these longtime trolls didn’t know (or bother to ask) where the money coming from is… something.
Isn’t that just trickling down from the DOJ though? The article says:
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
True, but these people have been completely aligned with Kremlin talking points for years, and I wish the article and others would take the time to point that out. I’m sure it can be phrased in an ambiguous enough way that the reader can draw conclusions without it being libelous.
The AP is a straight news organization, I’m sure there are plenty of left wing articles about the situation that mention that though.
Doesn’t MBFC already rate AP as “left”? Any factual reporting outlet is going to be called “left” because facts are seen as “left” in today’s Overton window.
I think it’s dishonest to pretend these Russian operatives had any plausible deniability. There is absolutely nothing plausible about their denial. Just because they weren’t charged with knowingly accepting Russian money doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely obvious that they knew where the money was coming from.
MBFC is full of shit when describing bias - they call firmly right liberal capitalists “the left”. I don’t think they even have a word to describe actual socialists.
They’re decent about judging the reliability of factual reporting though.
Your comment is 100% factual. That makes you a leftist!
Okay, then the DOJ grasping at any flimsy excuse to avoid indicting the traitorous right-wing influencers themselves is… something.
That better?
Yes 👍🏾
Nazis are always treated with kid gloves by the US “justice” system. Same as it ever was.
Like Trump?
And many others.
Nowhere near that deeply complicit. These are just garden-variety traitors.
A lot of today’s problems, like the rise of the KKK, stochastic terrorism, and infiltration of law enforcement by neo-nazis, can be traced back to an insufficient number of Confederates being hanged after the war.
Same as it ever was.
I doubt this was the case during (and for at least a time after) WWII. But maybe a history buff can correct me. I haven’t looked too deeply into how the justice system handled Nazis that far back.
Before the war, they were treated very leniently. Nobody was charged in the Businessmen’s Plot, the leaders of the German-American Bund were left alone, companies like IBM and Ford that traded with the Nazis were never punished for it, and even after the war, during the Red Scare, people were put under suspicion for “premature anti-fascism.”
Being bought is different than being duped.
Third straight election, you say? I wonder if there is any other factor shared by the last three elections? Like maybe one of the candidates has been the same person?
“Duped” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that Russia was funding me to spout these talking points!”
“Your gratuities, sir”
“Oh, thank you very much.”
I don’t think most of them were duped. It’s been exceptionally obvious for years. I mean I guess some of them are dumb enough not to realize, but most are just taking advantage of the money and power.
Yeah, that’s like saying Old spice sponsors and influencer to sell Old spice then saying that they were duped to work for Proctor and Gamble.
Duped? Complicit
So their excuse is: “we are too dumb to go to prison”
Guilty by reason of Gullible? I’m going to use this, should they ever find myself in court.
No, it’s worse than that. That’s the DOJ’s excuse for refusing to indict the traitorous influencers themselves and only going after their Russian handlers.
There needs to be a law against what they did before they could be indicted for anything. Afaik there is no law against being a foreign propagandist.
Even the two handlers themselves would have been fully legal if they had simply registered as foreign agents.
Our first amendment protects these things, for better or for worse. It protects the right to lobby the government (petition for redress in the official language), with no bar to people doing it on behalf of foreign governments, which is why all we do is make them register under FARA for transparency. We’ve lived under this legal system through the whole Cold War.
Speech is similarly protected, even if it is at the behest of foreign governments.
Our first amendment protects lies and propaganda just the same as everything else, which is why any of us can still go look at RT right now if we wanted. If we can’t even ban RT with all the sanctions we have on Russia right now, how the hell are we supposed to go after these American citizens?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act
They still need to register under FARA though. Also you can’t claim ignorance if you’re actively trying to hide evidence like saying it was for phones instead of salary:
"Those shell companies initially received their funding from RT, and the subsequent payouts to Tenet were shielded not as salary payments but for electronic merchandise such as “BUYING GOODS-INV.013-IPHONE 15 PRO MAX 512GB.”
I’m sure the DOJ could make a crime stick if they really wanted to. But, do they really want to?
Merrick Garland has been the GQPs best friend the last 4 years. Hopefully Harris wins. Hopefully she’ll replace his stodgy ass with someone who cares about applying the law to everyone.
Yeah, maybe something obscure I guess. They’re not exactly black or anything though.
They weren’t duped. They gleefully and knowingly pushed anti-American propaganda in support of the Project 2025 Handmaid’s Tale christofascist theocratic dictatorship. They knew where the money was coming from but didn’t care.
I think in the indictment Lauren Chen and her husband referred to the company/investors as “the Russians” so those two at least were 100% not duped, they are just traitors.
Lauren has been fired from a news org she write for.
Idk if those two and the other useful idiots broke any laws though, the indictment is just for foreign agent registration stuff.
They told the personalities they were Russian? That’s news to me.
But yes, it looks like you’re right, i wouldn’t call them a news organization per se since they focus more on punditry but The Blaze did fire her (https://barrettmedia.com/2024/09/05/theblaze-terminates-contract-of-lauren-chen-after-doj-reveals-she-worked-for-russian-propaganda-operation/)
Idk if those two and the other useful idiots broke any laws though
I feel like it makes sense to charge anyone who was in on or knew about the scheme, and I’m pretty sure Lauren Chen counts as one of those figures.
I was kinda confused about who exactly Lauren Chen is in all this. I think you would classify her as a personality generally, but in the indictment she is referred to as founder 1 and her husband founder 2, they started tenet(?) and took money and messaging from the Russians. Lauren also hired producers to work at tenet and it looks like some of them were at least aware that they were peddling propaganda.
Non of the 6 personalities that were advertised on the tenet ticket were explicitly aware of who was paying tenet. They were just willfully ingorant and trying to grift.
I’ve heard some people speculate that Lauren Chen could already be arrested under a sealed indictment.
They never expressed any curiosity about where the money was coming from?
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
A conservative not expressing curiosity is unfortunately the most plausible element of the story:( but fuck these cunts, hope they catch consequences
