Thursday, September 5, 2024

Thursday Tweets -- In normal times, this would be a big deal.

It still might.

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State September 4, 2024

As part of a series of coordinated actions across the U.S. Government, the Department of State is taking three steps today to counter Kremlin-backed media outlets’ malicious operations seeking to influence or interfere in the 2024 U.S. elections.

Moscow’s methods of targeting those it identifies as adversaries are well known – from its illegal and unwarranted invasion of sovereign nations to the unjust imprisonment of innocent persons, to cyberattacks and meddling in foreign elections, to conducting sham elections in Russian-controlled territories of Ukraine.

In addition, we now know that RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has moved beyond being simply a media organization. RT has contracted with a private company to pay unwitting Americans millions of dollars to carry the Kremlin’s message to influence the U.S. elections and undermine democracy. Moreover, RT’s leadership has direct, witting knowledge of this enterprise.

To counter Russia’s state-backed covert influence operations, the Department is acting to hinder malicious actors from using Kremlin-supported media as a cover to conduct such covert influence activities. The Department’s actions include introducing a new visa restriction policy, Foreign Missions Act determinations of RT’s parent company Rossiya Segodnya, and other subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Sputnik and Ruptly, and announcing a Rewards for Justice offer.

Today’s announcement highlights the lengths some foreign governments go to undermine American democratic institutions. But these foreign governments should also know that we will not tolerate foreign malign actors intentionally interfering and undermining free and fair elections. The United States will continue to both expose those state-sponsored actors who attempt to undermine our democratic institutions and hold them accountable for those actions.


https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2024/09/04/indictment-russians-tennessee-company-tenet/75074263007/ 

 

An indictment unsealed Wednesday alleges a Tennessee content creation company was the tool a team of Russian propagandists used to infiltrate U.S. audiences with Kremlin-backed messaging.

Two Russian nationals who worked for Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, were indicted on accusations they funneled nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based online content creation company to publish English-language videos on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube. The company's more than 2,000 videos posted in the last 10 months have been viewed more than 16 million times just on YouTube, according to the indictment.

The indictment, unsealed in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, doesn't identify the Tennessee company, but descriptions in the indictment match those of Tennessee-based Tenet Media.

The indictment states the company described itself on its website as "a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues." Tennessee-based company Tenet Media has the same message on its homepage. The indictment states the Tennessee-based company was incorporated around Jan. 19, 2022, which matches records from the Tennessee Secretary of State's Office. The indictment says the company applied to the Tennessee Department of State to conduct business on May 22, 2023.

Tennessean reporters have submitted a message seeking comment in the submission form on Tenet Media's website and emailed requests for comment to commentators listed on Tenet Media's website.




By my count we're at three to five black swans so far this election so we've all gotten a bit jaded but this does have potential and it's already apparently shaking some people up.




On a possibly related note.








Lots of major GOP and MAGA figures are linked with Tenet indirectly...


 

or directly.










This was originally going to be a multi-topic tweet ending on a light note. When the big news of the day provided me with too much material, I decided to save the rest for later but keep the bird where he was because I thought we could all use it. 

There's no intentional metaphor here but I'm sure you can come up with one.



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