Dave Rubin/Tim Pool - "Oops! I Got Paid $400,000 a Month by Russia to Do Propaganda! I'm a Victim!"

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:02 Clip: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.

0:00:18 Clip: What's my crime? I got bold? And a little negligent? Nope!

0:00:26 Clip: Bailiffs are coming to take away my will to live. Well, one count of being a bear, and one count of being an accessory to being a bare. This is a free court!

0:00:44 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1066. I'm your host Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney and a real dead mic Matt Cameron. Matt has gone through a couple mics. Yeah no kidding.

0:00:54 Matt: Comrade probably should check back with our funders is about getting better mics, though. I time is it in Moscow? I better Google that.

0:01:03 Thomas: Yeah, let me call my Parisian contact and see what... Oh, man, I cannot wait to talk about this. If you, if you haven't seen everyone, is, wow. I mean, it's my, we've gone through, both of us have gone through several different stages of emotion on this of like, oh my God, ridiculous, predictable. And then like, Oh yeah, horrible and depressing and what this means.

0:01:09 Matt: So much to talk about. Yeah. Actually, very bad.

0:01:23 Thomas: But then I managed to come out the other side too, back to like, man, this is hilarious in a way. But anyway, what we're talking about is the fact that Russian media, I guess you would call them, have been paying a of idiots, right -wing idiots, including Dave Rubin and Tim Pool to do Russian propaganda. And unbelievable. It's the DOJ indictment. And this is how much I care about this, Matt, that. Everyone listening. I read through this indictment pain, because people were misidentifying who was who, in my opinion, I was like, that's not right. And so I had to go, it was one of those fun, like, you know, logic puzzles where you have to piece together, you know each of the things. Um, but anyway, that'S, this is amazing. I cannot wait to talk about it. It's crazy.

0:01:35 Matt: I would. Hey, me too. Sure. Right. Is good stuff. I'm really excited to talk to you about it. And it's the kind of thing, I've never actually read indictment that confirms something I already believe so thoroughly. It's perfect.

0:02:15 Thomas: But But then again, who else is out there? We'll talk about it. But also, we got some updates in Trump stuff to cover first. So after this break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law, we'll get to it.

0:02:26 Matt: Spasibo.

0:02:30 Thomas: This is kind of breaking, news. I haven't even I've been so heavy in Russian indictments here. haven'T I caught it. What's happening with the Trump stuff?

0:02:36 Matt: As of the time of recording, just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkan had a hearing. As promised, we talked about this last week because of the new superseding indictment. Waived his right to appear at an arraignment. And Jack Smith had no problem with that. He's being arraigned again. He doesn't want to have to go through it again. And he doesn't have to. Under Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, you can sign off on a waiver and say you don't want be there. That actually is true in most jurisdictions.

0:02:58 Thomas: But when you're on trial, you do have to be there.

0:03:01 Matt: Yeah, it turns out, and you have to complain about the cold courtroom and the conflicted judge every day. Todd Blanche and John Lauro, our good friend Todd Todd Blanche is showing up this morning for Trump. And we it's been about a year, as Chetkin noted, that this case has been open and now it's kind of restarting with this new indictment. And I just want to give a few updates on what we learned this morning, because I think this mostly confirmed what I thought, which is that we're going to be in this case for a very long time. It is not going anywhere anytime soon. Jack we know from talking about it last week, Jack Smith pared this thing down. He tried to, he took the scissors to it and tried to make sure that it could be getting through the process as quickly as possible. But of course, you're talking about Trump lawyers. You're talking About an unlimited firehose of money. So they're going to do what they can. And so I'll just give you a quick idea. They filed last week a schedule, which is pretty depressing, their proposed schedule for this case. Are They anticipating that what they call additional proceedings, if necessary, could go into fall of 2025. That's the trial, by the way.

0:03:57 Matt: If necessary, if you feel like it.

0:03:57 Thomas: That's what I would say, too. If I was, you know, a criminal and they're like, well, why don't you go ahead and propose? I didn't know you get to just propose a schedule. Well, I think first off, we should all reflect for a good six to eight years first and just think about the trial. And then if we need anything else after that, if necessary, then, we can do a little bit of that stuff. Ten years down the line.

0:04:18 Matt: Know, he's been going through so many criminal proceedings. He gets a sabbatical, right? You get like a year off. I think that's how it works. It's in the federal rule somewhere.

0:04:23 Thomas: He's like, I'm on my 10th stamp at the courthouse. So I get a, yeah.

0:04:28 Matt: Coffee. That's true. Courtois coffee sucks now, so I can't recommend it. But Jack Smith, in his filing, said that he is ready to file a brief immediately. They've had this thing locked and loaded. They're ready to go on the immunity issue because they knew that this was coming, obviously. And there's a whole point purpose of this. There was a lot of debate this morning about how and where they should hear the immunity case. Trump obviously wants it dismissed without an evidentiary hearing, which is ridiculous, obviously, the whole point of this is you have to go through and test the evidence if you want to do that. But obviously, immunity is a threshold issue. It's something that you have to get to before you get to anything else, because if he's immune, then he can't be prosecuted. Morning, they seem most concerned with the allegations regarding Mike Pence, as we talked about last week. They retooled it so that Mike Pence was his running mate rather than his vice president. And they still don't think that's good enough because he's still talking to him in official capacity. They've signaled that they want to try to file motions to dismiss, not just based on the immunity decision, but based on Fisher, the January 6th decision with Sarbanes-Oxley Act we've been talking about over the last few months. And, of course, my favorite moment of the hearing from what I read today, and I've read several different accounts of what happened, John Lauro, the attorney, made the mistake of saying that Clarence Thomas had directed them to file a motion.

0:04:39 Thomas: I bet. Yeah. Wow. Talk about the, the, Perry Mason moment or something. That's wow.

0:05:41 Matt: Yeah, that's saying the quiet part way too loud. Was like, he directed you to do what?

0:05:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:49 Matt: Which is very funny. Yeah, obviously, as we know, in his concurrence to Trump v. U.S., the immunity decision and Clarence Thomas had some thoughts, had some dicta, but did not direct anybody to do anything, even if Eileen Cannon took it that way. They do want to file the stupid special counsel argument, which Chutkan said on the record was not particularly persuasive. She found it not persuasive in itself, which is a very polite way to say it. I don't find it persuasive either. But also, more on point, it is directly against the D.C. Circuit's precedent. They already have precedent on this during the Mueller case. They already found that special counsel was lawfully appointed in exactly the same way. So this is not going anywhere.

0:06:21 Thomas: Love the polite in it in itself. That'S a good, I don't find it persuasive in itself If paired with a persuasive argument, I could see just a package deal like that being persuasive. But in itself, no.

0:06:32 Matt: Yeah. No, Trump no, lawyers, it's just so funny to me. And we've already seen Todd Blanche. And certainly, if you want to go back and listen to Gavelpod, you'll hear a lot of Todd Blanche. And he's got that same kind of sense of entitlement. And this is his home literally. This is federal court. This is where Todd Blanche usually appears. Years. So he should have home court advantage here. And he is, Lauro here is talking about how there's like a hidden grand jury, some sort of information from a hidden grand jury package of information that would be quote unquote, very exonerative of Trump. And so we got to get that out somehow. I don't know what they're talking about. Just there's some information in Canada or something that we have to go retrieve. The other best moment of this, which was transcribed verbatim by different several news sources when Lauro made the mistake of again saying, we are talking about the presidency of the United States. And Chutkan, of course, responds, I'm not talking about the presidency of the United States. I'm talking about a four -count indictment, which is literally

0:07:22 Thomas: I don't know what the hell he's talking about. Yeah. And

0:07:22 Matt: Her job. So just a big, long mess. Not much actually came out of this because there are so many different things. They have to coordinate this. She's going to be putting out a scheduling order. It might even be out as soon as this episode is, But there's no decision coming out of this exactly how it's going to go. But obviously, Smith is pushing for kind of a streamlined, let's just get this done as quickly as possible approach. And Trump is doing the opposite, as you'd expect, and wants to break this up into a whole bunch of different motion hearings the same way he did with Cannon, where he's just going to keep piling on these motions and making the judge do different things. You know, Chutkan's intent on moving forward, obviously. Smith wants to move forward. You Know, this is not Allen Cannon we're dealing with here. I think we've got a much better chance of maybe someday, assuming that Donald Trump is not president, which let's hope, maybe we'll actually get to have this thing tried before next fall.

0:08:07 Thomas: That's the underlying truth that we've kind of been on this whole time. They successfully, Trump successfully, in every case except the one we covered on gavel gavel, in every case, except that successfully pushed it to after the election. Right. I mean, that's, that'S what it is.

0:08:21 Matt: And lucky with Fani Willis, but, you

0:08:23 Thomas: Sorry. Sorry, after the election or never, if he wins the election for some of these. So, yeah, pretty

0:08:26 Matt: That's right. And it is so gross that we just know that, that we can just talk about that and just we openly understand that there will be no case if there's a Trump. So we'll see. Let's have a President Tramp as my solution.

0:08:36 Thomas: Crazy, pretty crazy. That's a good idea.

0:08:42 Matt: Just working with it.

0:08:43 Thomas: I didn't know. Wait, we can do that. Sorry, I would not worth doing this bit. But yeah, no, it's totally let's do that all right, Matt. Well thanks for that update. And now I cannot wait to get to the main story comrade. Here we go. After this break.

0:09:02 Thomas: All right, Matt. Well, where were you when, why don't you, why Don't you start us off?

0:09:07 Matt: I got the message from Lydia, actually. I hadn't seen it. I was very excited when I saw it, but yeah.

0:09:10 Thomas: No, it was me then. Okay. It was actually me. Cause I posted it in the Slack and was like, oh my God.

0:09:14 Matt: That was you, not Lydia.

0:09:15 Thomas: Yeah, it wasn't me. Sorry.

0:09:16 Matt: That's right. It's usually Lydia that sends me the things. Yeah.

0:09:18 Thomas: I'm not letting Lydia take credit for this.

0:09:20 Matt: Was A. Smith. There we go. I'm reading this and I'm like, well, obviously these people are Russian operatives. We know that.

0:09:21 Thomas: Yeah. We're, Really?

0:09:25 Matt: And then I started looking into the law and it's way more interesting than I thought. This is going to be big precedent, no matter what happens with this. And this is, I think, the beginning, I'm hoping, of a number of dominoes. And the DOJ is kind of promising that, that they're going to be taking a numberof actions before the election. Yeah.

0:09:39 Matt: Well, was the New York Times story about this today. To that effect, there was something saying that this is sort of, there's a package of pre -election enforcement actions they want to take. You know, along with this indictment, they also seized immediately 32 domain names of all kinds of misinformation, disinformation websites. The indictment, as you might notice, mentions that there is an empire of covert projects. I believe that was actually the Russian phrasing of it. And so that empire, certainly, I think we can all think of a few more right -wing commentators and

0:09:39 Thomas: Where did they do that? Where where did they promise that I well I just to clarify though for everyone like unlike us who didn't read the indictment 45 times the Rubin et al. Tenet, they're not indicted nor is even the people very much should be indicted and I can't believe it I have to I can't wait to ask you about this so far the indictement itself the one we're talking about now is just for these two russians right who like uh this whole thing with the oh I don't know how much we're going to get into but some of the worst spycraft you've ever seen the absolutely not smart uh but hey if you're just trying to fool um rubin don't have to try that hard so you know there you go but anyway though two russian's are the only ones in the indictment um founders of the company are Lauren Chen and her husband uh and Liam Don and first question to you sir is it the indictment goes out of its way to show that they knew that these were russian

0:10:21 Matt: We'll talk about that. Right. No, we got to get into it. Yeah. A lot.

0:10:56 Thomas: They have private conversations where they're like they hey referred to him as the russians they didn't know this. They actually worked for RT already. And then the key here is that RT was banned when the Ukraine invasion happened. So I guess that's the big kind of like the reason they had to start doing this instead. Why aren't they indicted?

0:11:09 Matt: That's right. A great question. And I think they still could be. We'll talk it out about how the law works here, because my first thought is they might be protected under a couple of the different things we're going to talk about here. But the more I looked into the case law and looked into how this act has been applied, I really think that this could be coming for him still. Chen, as you said, well-known commentator for The Blaze. Liam Donovan is not actually the Liam Donovan who is a lobbyist. On Twitter with that because an understandable mistake. But he's some sort of blogger who started this company with her. This company was started in January 2022. I found that business registration in Tennessee. They had been kind of messing around before they got really into Tenet, which is Tenet Media, which was the actual company that is the subject of this indictment. And they'd been working with these Russian contacts. But it is pretty clear, as you said, that these two knew all the way through. They at one point talk about billing the Russians,

0:11:17 Thomas: I'm hoping. Yeah.

0:12:03 Matt: As if it wasn't obvious enough.

0:12:04 Thomas: Send the bill to the Russians. Yeah, it's

0:12:07 Matt: Said Lauren Chen already had a relationship with RT. She actually wrote 25 extremely pro -Russia op -eds. I found a few of them. Maybe we'll link to her RT page. Page,

0:12:14 Thomas: Better than that, Matt. They talk about how she like duplicate dipped. She's like, they had 200 something articles that she wrote on RT or videos, one or the other. And then, you of those, she also just reposted on her own thing. So I guess, I mean, that tells you how successful the overall Russian project of marrying Russian's interest to right -wing talking points has been. If they can just put out these videos, if Chen Lauren can put out those videos and also charge Russia for them, like that's a good sign that like, and nobody really cared. It's a Good sign that I guess they've successfully married those two things, which is really scary and depressing.

0:12:46 Matt: It is. And actually, I was going to read from one of her op -eds about how great Russia is, where she's talking about Tulsi Gabbard. And I just thought this was perfectly ironic because she said, sadly, Gabbard's criticisms were met with the usual accusations of being a foreign asset with little or no attempt to address the actual substance of her position. Love it. An actual foreign asset, writing that. It's perfect. There's a lot of talk about Gabbad because she's been really pro -Assad, among other things.

0:13:17 Thomas: My God. Yeah. Tulsi Gabbard just, you know, obviously is now going to be in Trump's cabinet no it's uh trump's uh what is it the it's with RFK Jr. right she and RFK Jr. are going to be on the transition team that's what it is those are the people you want her indictment not to not to branch off too much but people like her you start to wonder you're like what happened you were in the democratic primary a minute ago and uh okay anyway uh

0:13:41 Matt: She's always been a little out there, but yeah, no, this is pretty far out there. So this company clearly was built on Russian money, and it's just not a lot of question. They're trying to deny that now, of course. I don't think that Liam Donovan or Lauren Chen have made a statement yet. All of the commentators involved in this have all made statements distancing themselves from this. And I think, honestly, they do have pretty strong defenses here. The person referenced in the indictment is commentator one. Well, in terms of legal defenses, maybe in terms of what would actually clear in a court. I think that we all know that they knew something because commentator 1, who is almost certainly Dave Rubin. You want to talk about why you know that's Dave Ruben?

0:14:13 Thomas: Okay, here's what happened. We got the company, Tenet Media. It was started and was confusing for a second. It started by foreign nationals. I was like, wait, did the Russian? No, no. Lauren Chen and her husband are Canadian and they had a Canadian company that they did all their bullshit through. And then they started like an American arm of that called Tenant media back whenever he said in Tennessee, I looked up all the registration and all that stuff. Uh, interesting note. I saw, saw someone claiming that commentator one was this person, Benny Johnson, who I actually hadn't heard of. And that seemed instantly wrong to me. And so I went through the whole thing and wrote down every piece of information about that's mentioned in the indictment about who commentator 1 through 6 are and pieced it together. And I think, I I mean, I have pretty much like a hundred percent. I don't think there's much room I don't think there's much wiggle room on it um importantly uh feminism founder one is lauren chen founder two is liam whatever and it's important because she actually is way more the driver of this stuff and I think I've

0:15:11 Matt: Sure.

0:15:11 Thomas: Seen some coverage that I think just like I honestly like maybe just kind of sexist lee assumed like he was driving a lot of this and it's like no she's if you look at the indictment he's just doing invoices and shit like he's he's managing the money and stuff and she's the one really driving the core project here um so it talks about the commentators one through six it doesn't do any names of course except the russians and it says an american media company you know with this tagline and of course you search the tagline it's Tenet Media that's easy and then uh Tenet Media website has six commentators on the website and when you you know it, there's commentators one through six in the indictment. And So these Russians, I'm pretty sure from the beginning, it seems to me that founders one and two are pretty knowledgeable about. This is obviously just the Russians. They make comments saying that, but I guess we're to maybe say allegedly on that just to be legally sound. And they agree to find some commentators, popular influencers who could do the job of of being, not just pro -Russia stuff. It's also Russia has interest in, gosh, I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but like it's everything you would think if it's all more believable too, if your propaganda is not, Russia is so amazing and great. Look at their grocery store. That's not believable, pin in that. But when you're just sowing chaos and you're you're hatred and you're selling division. And occasionally you're putting in some stuff that is in Russia's interest. Like for example, trying to cast confusion and doubt over who was responsible for the Moscow terror attack and try to maybe

0:15:59 Matt: Can't miss it. Yeah.

0:16:49 Thomas: Get your listeners to think, Oh, well, there's some doubt there. Maybe it's a Ukraine, they hit out in Ukraine, blah, blah, blah. So it's, it is very dastardly. It's in it's it subtle. You know, it's not, It's not entirely just out -and -out Russian propaganda that you could identify easily. So Lauren Chen is driving this finding the personalities and stuff. Now, here's what I found to be an interesting detail, Matt, and think most people, maybe have glossed over and assumed that like lauren chen uh recruited these commentators but it actually says that the russians came to lauren chin with a short list of influencers and dave rubin was one of them or sorry and commentators one and two were on there and it's like okay so that whatever dave rubin wasn't doing before who knows if this is his first dalliance with russian propaganda money whatever he was doing before landed him on a short list when a russian like operative is trying to find who could be their propaganda mouthpiece

0:17:43 Matt: I'm sorry, are you denying Dave Rubin's talent? Are you saying that they just didn't pick him out because of his amazing work?

0:17:47 Thomas: It's just because of his raw charisma yeah yeah and so they say that uh can make that happen and this is this is what's insane to me lauren chen founder one is like well I think it might cost for commentators one and two, who turn out to be, in my solid opinion, I'll tell you why, Dave and Tim Poole, they're like, that could cost you $2 million a year for each of them. And I'm thinking, well, that's insane. Like, what are we talking about here? And then Russia, if you're listening, is like, yeah, okay, no, that's good. And then they come back, they'RE like, hey, all right, we tried to negotiate a little further. Turns out, here's what it's going to be. And people misread this because they thought Tim Pool got screwed over. He didn't. Rubin's going to get $400,000 a month for four weekly videos, plus a $100,000 ,000 signing bonus.

0:18:16 Matt: Insane. Saying we're doing something wrong that's that's just wow we

0:18:45 Thomas: Hey, Russia, if you're listening, I do it for $375,000. Solid $375 a month. And

0:18:50 Matt: Won't actually repeat anything you want us to but you can give us the money yep

0:18:53 Thomas: What's funny. I saw saw some people commenting, oh, Tim Pool got screwed. He negotiated $100,000. And then it's like, missed you the details. $100,000 a week for one video. So he's actually getting the same amount of money or more for of the work. So, he actually got an incredibly good deal. The person who got totally screwed is Benny Johnson. And I say screwed in terms of bad guy stuff, you know, is he bought paid. I did some math to try to figure out what he was paid. It's a little tricky because they don't give us exact cutoff dates. They we don't, don't know that payments were made exactly how it says in the contract. Um, but just for fun, I felt like, okay, those two clowns are getting roughly 5 million a year. Each those two first clowns, Dave Rubin and Tim pool. Uh, then yeah, Benny Johnson, who has nearly the same number of subscribers as dave rubin he it says at a certain point in the indictment says um 8.7 million dollars were paid out from when this started essentially november to august uh november

0:19:15 Matt: Come on yeah yeah it's last

0:19:54 Thomas: 23 to augusta like yeah now uh it says include 8.7 million to one one two and three alone and I did the math and like well wait a minute that's almost a year just if you math it out and estimate that's 4 million each to Dave Rubin and Tim Poole. And that leaves roughly 700 ,000. Oh wait, the signing bonus, 600 ,000, maybe even less. Cause it also alluded to performance bonuses for Dave Ruben. So like these two clowns are getting 4 million plus and Benny Johnson in that time period got a up measly half a million dollars. I mean,

0:19:54 Matt: Month days ago yeah yeah ah poor guy

0:20:27 Thomas: Do you think he could sue? Do you think you could allege discrimination or something? Thing.

0:20:32 Matt: He's gonna have to get a good lawyer in moscow Yeah. But I think, and I just want to point out too, in the indictment that Chen went back and told the Russians from a profitability standpoint, it would be very hard to recoup the costs. No shit. Who knew? It turns out they're not actually worth anywhere near that much money at

0:20:48 Thomas: Yeah. And the Russians are like, yeah, that's fine.

0:20:50 Matt: Tim Pulovich and Dave Rubinoff come out and say that they did not know that they were being paid by the Russians, who do you think was paying you? Who do you think thought that was worth that much money? It was not ad revenue. You know that. You have to know that, but they're still, they're going to be insulated for reasons we'll talk about, but like, there's no way. So, but at one point, Dave Rubin comes back and asks like, who is this guy who's paying us?

0:21:00 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:21:11 Matt: Like, where is this coming from? Because And they'd been using this name of Edward, sorry, I just had it in front

0:21:10 Thomas: Yep yep. To pronounce. And they misspell their own fake name several times, these folks, so it is a little hard to know exactly what the name is. Yep Edward Gregorian.

0:21:20 Matt: In the emails. I just couldn't keep their story straight. Edward Gregorian. And he's a composer from way back but he doesn't exist as the investor they're talking about so the Russians have to make up I'm sure you saw the fake CV which is beautiful beautiful thing and good

0:21:34 Thomas: So here's To a little more detail on it because it's fun, who is Tim Pool, he was like, hey, I want to kind of talk to this guy. Before we sign up, you're like, oh, good, doing a little due diligence. They're like hey, before I sign on to this whole $5 million a year to make one video a week, not sketchy at all. I sign on to that, I'm going to need to at least talk to the person who's bankrolling this. And with one of the other, I think arranged the meeting. He, had made up that he was in France or He's like, Let's all meet. It was like something like 4 PM France time, you you know, just France time. And then at three 55 or whatever it is, you know about five minutes before the meeting, uh, time, the Russian obvious Russian emails, Hey, where's everybody? What's I'm here. What's going on? And then, then they have that, that he searched what time is it in Paris? And it was like one hour behind. And so then the Russian guy sends, Oh, I forgot to sync my calendar did the whoops whoops a daisy it's

0:22:39 Thomas: Like yep so obvious but tim pool whatever that conversation is we don't have that they might have used like encrypted whatever tim pool's like yeah okay checks out that's all we know he's like he has no problem with it however dave rubin yeah he was like ah he he did it no founder one did a google search and uh no results came up for this literally no results came up for this name.

0:22:39 Matt: Definitely not in Russia Russia. It's so good. But Dave Rubin does not exist.

0:23:03 Thomas: I would imagine Dave Rubin might've done the same thing, but I don't know if they don't have his like search stuff. I don' know. Uh, but Dave Rubin's like, Hey, send me something. And they're like, Oh, we don't know if he's done any interviews or anything, but we'll send you this CV. They send the most obviously made up CV in the world. And, uh, what do you think that, uh. Patriotic American detective and all around smart person, Dave Ruben said, they say, wow, this is obviously fake. Am I being had? Is this a Russian propaganda? Nope. He saw that the phrase social justice was in the CV and he said, all right, looks good, but take out the social justice. Cause that, I mean, we're right wing.

0:23:08 Matt: They wouldn't. It sounds of liberal. Also, a focus on poverty alleviation. The Russians are not good at this. Come on. Do you think Dave Ruben cares about poverty alleviating or social justice? Who are you you're talking to? And the CV itself is just amazing. You've got this stock guy looking out a private jet window with his face blurred, and then just this long CV of investment management stuff. And it's just so stupid. But if somebody's going to give you $5 million, I guess you just don't want to ask that many questions. You

0:23:47 Thomas: So good. Yeah. Amazing. So that's, that's all, the only problem he had with it was just, hey, you know, we're not liberals here, X -Nay on the social justice say, and then they're like, good to go, you now, just, just start cranking out, and so that' s how I for sure confirmed um these people were by because dave rubin I went back and looked at the video schedule and his contract was the one that said he would do four videos a month and dave Rubin sure enough you go back in their channel he was streaming for four live videos uh sorry not a month a week um the other guy was in two pools only doing one and benny johnson was only doing one or so but didn't talk about his contract or what was getting paid but

0:24:44 Matt: But Pool, there might be people listening who don't know who Tim Pool is. And I'm happy for you. You should probably keep it that way. But I'm just trying to imagine Tim Pool sitting there thinking, yeah, I'm worth $100 ,000 an episode. Obviously, this is the kind of content that people pay that much money for. It is trash. He's so bad at this. He's really stupid.

0:24:58 Thomas: You wish they it was harder to make five million dollars a year on propaganda no

0:25:08 Matt: You can find all these clips of him talking about how Ukraine's the biggest enemy of the United States and how they're going to start World War III and we have to look out for them. I mean, it's just really obvious stuff and pro -Russia stuff all the way up and down. It's not subtle, why would it be? Lot of these people, I think, might have come up with some of the the stuff themselves because there is such strong attachment to Russia on the right right now. And of course, that is because there's a lot of money being spread around, but I don't know how much they believe or not. But it uh I think one of them is uh the other 27 and they were introduced to the producers as outside editors that they're going to be coming in and if I'm understanding this correctly they ended up posting 841 videos out of the 2000 or so that Tenet Media has posted in its lifetime that's what I understand from the from this is that they they were they were given posting privileges and they just started posting whatever.

0:25:20 Thomas: Yeah uh yeah yep eventually lauren chen and the other guy are like Like, hey, I'm tired of sweating the details on this whole illegal operation. Why don't you just post whatever? Now, when you say post whatever, that was them. They're still posting these five, these six commentators. It's that they were handling like the edits and the whatever. So it's not like in amongst the commentator videos, there's like Soviet tourism videos. They But were, they were giving pointers. And it's funny early on, they complain like, hey these, these people aren't sharing the videos, except for one guy. I one of the minor ones that had like, yeah, they're like, well, he's doing a great job actually. He's doing fine, but everybody else is Commentator five, Taylor Hanson. I love being one of those small time YouTubers that got caught up in this because that must feel like a pretty good deal, you know, because he had like a couple thousand and subscribers. And they're like, he's the only one sharing our propaganda. Come on. And then the, uh, Lauren Chen pointed out like, well, that's not their contract. Didn't say they had to share, you the videos on their own feeds or whatever, which is what the Russians were asking for.

0:26:24 Matt: Commentator five, he's good at it.

0:26:52 Thomas: And like, yeah, but this, this won't work unless you do that. So please make them.

0:26:52 Matt: What are we paying for here, guys?

0:26:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:58 Matt: Come on. And then they start getting involved with editorial stuff. And the worst example, of course, was the Moscow mass shooting that ISIS pretty much immediately took credit for and that US intelligence knew that ISIS had carried out. And the Russians wanted to make sure that they were putting out the line on Tenet Media that it was the US and Ukraine that were responsible for this mass shooting, as much as possible.

0:27:00 Thomas: So good. Just confuse the issue as well. And this one. One, yeah, you I, know, it might almost be worth playing this one, but it is a little jumbled. So it'd be hard, but this one was actually pretty dastardly. I watched this one. So it's, it's I had one trick here is that I think the indictment has the dates wrong because it says honor about March 23rd. It asks commentator three to do a thing, but the only video, uh, that fits the description is March 22nd. I'm missing something, that's, the that'S only one I can find, but in it you can really see how much and this is ist uh benny johnson you can see it happening in real time he'll be pulling up you know because he's doing coverage he's pulling up an article you know that's the like article headline will be like uh isis did this and when that you know stuff like that happens a bit yeah no so unclear uh know we don't know and then he he up the fact that like, wait a minute, the U.S. intelligence warned, hey, stay away from malls and movie theaters because there's going to be an attack. And he says, this was both a mall and a movie theater. That's too convenient for me. So he's just doing, it's really, really sick. Like he's juste doing any,

0:28:22 Matt: Stupid.

0:28:23 Thomas: Casting any doubt he can. Can And even see his mind working because this is a stream and he's working in real time when something comes up that's kind of against the narrative. He finds a way to like not really say it you know and then point it back to where he wants it really sickening

0:28:36 Matt: And should actually mention real quick that you're an expert on all these things because you've been following the anti -woke panic for more than a year now, right? So you know these people pretty well,

0:28:41 Thomas: Well I've been following Dave Rubin for a very long time ever since he uh off and did his own thing and had his own little channel uh the atheist movement he had Sam Harris on his first thing that was where he was kind of trying to you know leech from and this was back before Sam Harris was full on what he became uh I and many people people probably listening, we're still kind of following him. Uh, and right away I just saw, I won't go too much into it, but the main thing I saw from Dave Rubin was it was vapid. Like it was, there was just nothing like it was completely like He'd ask dumb questions and make points.

0:29:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and the only other, uh the bit thing that you might not know. Around that same time, uh at this stupid Mythicist Milwaukee event that had I gone to the first one and done a talk about having read through the Bible, had a ton of fun. Then they got taken over kind of by the segment of them that was hard, hard to write or trying to pretend they're on the left, but covertly right. They wanted me to do another and I didn't know. I was like, yeah, sure. I'll do another things. I agreed to do an other thing. And they're like, well, you can have a debate with somebody and the guests were going to be terrible. And I said, why don't you do an an interview with Dave Rubin on the stage. I was like, oh, I fuck. Was regretting that I agreed to do this. But if you're going to let me interview Dave that guy is a clown. And so I like, yes, absolutely. Let's do this now. Like, hey, but it's going to have to be an interview, though. It can't really be a debate. I'm like, OK. And in my mind, I'm like, I'll just ask really, you know, obviously pointed questions. And after like a few back and fourths. They're like, yeah, he doesn't want to do it. And so thus they, how I ended up having the kind of, I don't know, altercation with this right wing YouTuber, Sargon of Akkad. He was the substitute

0:29:17 Matt: Bad at it all around. Oh,

0:30:25 Thomas: In for Dave Rubin that didn't come to that event. So anyway, back a long way with the, with the Dave Ruben.

0:30:29 Matt: In some other world, you've interviewed him. But the funniest part of all of this is, by far, is when the producers push back because they want to repost an American, a well -known American political commentator who is absolutely Tucker Carlson, who is visiting a grocery store in Moscow and just going on about how great it is. And I think we should play a couple seconds of that at least because it's pretty wonderful.

0:30:52 Thomas: Yeah, and will play it. I think the exact the, details to me were amusing. So the Russians were like, hey, this is part of it when they were talking about like people need to repost it. They're like, hey, one other thing you need to post in Tenet Meet and the main Tenet channel, the YouTube channel, post this video. And it's Tucker Carlson doing, you propaganda, which we'll play. And this is the Russians. And the producers are like, hey, are you sure about this? Like, we can't just post it. Like, yeah, this is whoa. And then founder two, who was, you know, Liam tells producer one that founder one is like insistent, like, like so basically Lauren says posted essentially. And so the producer is like all right, I guess. And that's how that went down.

0:31:18 Matt: It's a little much. And he said, it feels like overt shilling, which it is. So, yeah, yeah. Let's hear Tucker Carlson. I wouldn't usually say that, but yeah.

0:31:48 Thomas: How

0:31:49 Clip: A longstanding feature, maybe the longest standing feature of Cold War propaganda in the West was the Soviet grocery store. No products, no choices, shoddily made things, and it wasn't actually propaganda, it was real, and you can look up the pictures on the internet if you want. So we thought it would be interesting to take a look at a contemporary, modern -day, 2024 Russian grocery store two years into sanctions. Around

0:32:17 Thomas: So that's how he starts it. And then he does things like marvel. It really is like a PBS segment, like a dark universe. Things that are at the grocery store, loaf of bread. Wow. Wow. I didn't know they had bread, wine. Holy smokes. And then you get toward the end. And I really want to play the end here.

0:32:36 Clip: Went from amused to legitimately angry. So we were guessing what this would cost. Everybody who hears from the United States buys groceries and we didn't pay any attention to cost as we were just putting in the cart what we would actually eat over a week and we all came in around 400 bucks about 400 bucks it was a hundred and four dollars U.S. here and that's when you start to realize that ideology maybe doesn't matter as much as you thought corruption if you take people's standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation and they literally can't buy the groceries they want at that point maybe it matters less what you say or whether you're a good person or a bad person you're wrecking people's lives in their country and that's what our leaders have done to us and

0:33:03 Thomas: Yeah. Here's this mess. Here's the goal of this whole thing.

0:33:18 Thomas: God. Here's the issue you with that, that logical problem that people may have thought of, Hey, only a hundred dollars. Okay. Um, how much do they make there? And you do the conversion on that, they make a fraction of what we make. It's like yeah, our dollar goes really far places because that's how like kind of international commerce Like A hundred bucks seems great to us, but to them groceries on average, I saw a stat that it's 61% of their paycheck is just buying 61%. So yeah. Hey Tucker, you, you forgot one side of the equation.

0:33:34 Matt: Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just no surprise. Yeah. American money is going pretty far. In the world. And Moscow is way down the list of a city I would live in, to be honest. So yeah, is the video that was just too much for Tenet Media, but they posted it anyway, even though it was over at Shilling. I can't wait for Tucker Carlson's.

0:34:15 Thomas: It was too much for producer one for like five minutes. And then, yeah, until they are told Lauren Chen wants it. And they're like, all right.

0:34:18 Matt: That's right. Right. Till they're told otherwise. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I can't wait for Tucker Carlson's indictment, man, but we'll get there.

0:34:29 Thomas: Yeah. Well, here's here's an important thing that didn't make this video like this. What we have no evidence of what this was. Because I it hard to believe that this would be something Tucker Carlson is making completely free from any moneyed influence because it's insane.

0:34:44 Matt: He just loves Russia. Russia.

0:34:46 Thomas: Yeah. But this was which is interesting to me because it almost suggests like we don't know how many of these Russians there are doing these things with other people, with other media groups, with another right wing personalities, and I could almost imagine you've got another Slack channel that's just these Russians talking to each other that's like, oh my god, we got Tucker Carlson, somehow got him to do this, hey, send it out everywhere, and then Gregor Edward Gregorian hops on to one of his many fake profiles and is like, hey, uh, we want you to put this video on, right? I mean, like, we don't know. I don't want to get too crazy, but there's... that this was the only... this operation seemed nil to me, right,

0:35:28 Matt: Way. Especially when they're telling us they have an empire. On. So we should talk about the actual charge here, because I think we've basically covered the allegations, which are that... And again, if half of the content that's being posted is at the direction of Russian operatives, this is pretty bad. This is not incidental. And I don't want to do the blue and on thing, where I just blame everything on Russia, and I say that Russia's behind every communication you don't like. But I think we all know that you go online and you see a lot of weird stuff of people that just have no reason to be saying some of the things they're saying, and you wonder. And I've been wondering about some of these people and their just insistence on hating Ukraine. It's just really weird, stuff like that. So as it is, the real crux of this thing, there's a money laundering charge. I think it's pretty obvious what's going on with money laundering because the Russians are using a number of shell companies to make sure they could pay the up to $10 million that a tenant received. I'm not really interested in the money launding part. I want to talk about the Foreign Agents Registration Act, because this is a really interesting angle, what's going on right now. This is a statute, it's kind of like with the Logan Act thing, which was from 1799. This statute is from 1938, and it was originally put together and recommended by the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, which is the predecessor to the McCarthy Committee. At the time, they were very concerned about Nazi propaganda in the United States, because Hitler was actually actively working with journalists us to get these messages out there, which were deeply anti-Semitic. They would get messages out there about how the UK was going to lose and get taken over, and we shouldn't get involved.

0:36:52 Thomas: To mention Lindbergh, Charles Lindbergh, the Tucker Carlson of his time.

0:36:54 Matt: That's right, yeah, yeah. And Charles Coughlin, actually, if you know about one of the most popular radio people of all time, Father Charles Coughlin was a priest. He was super anti-Semitic and very pro-Hitler. And actually, I don't remember where I read this, but in a book somewhere a while back, I read that the Nazis were actually considering sending him some money, but they kind of watched his stuff and they're like, well, he's doing fine.

0:37:15 Thomas: Maybe that's the better comparison to Tucker. There are going to be people who are not in on the whole money thing and we're just stupid stupid enough to believe this propaganda, there are going to be those too. They're like, wait, I could have been getting paid to shill. I just believe this because I'm an idiot. Too bad.

0:37:19 Matt: That's right. Yep. Yeah. Useful idiots. Yeah, that's the name of the game. And that's actually one of the reasons that they wanted to carefully tailor the Foreign Agents Registration Act, because obviously you're going to have some First Amendment issues. Now, you don't want to stop people who are just out there saying stupid things because they just believe them. Want to target the people that are getting paid to see these things. Now, again, I want to be clear, this is not restricting speech. The idea is not to keep you from saying these things, the idea is to make sure that you register if you're going to say these things and that when you put this information out, that it's clear it's coming from the government that's behind you. And that's very important because that led to actual violence and vandalism and all kinds of chaos during the 30s and 40s during the war. And of course, they're concerned about the Soviets doing the same thing, obsessed with communist influence. Loans. This has evolved because obviously when we're talking about informational materials in the statute, they're thinking about pamphlets, right? They're thinking about little booklets and posters and whatever. But now we have speed of light. We've got Instagram, we've got TikTok, we're got X and everything else. And so there hasn't really been a good test case for all of this. And this may still not be because these people may never end up in the United States, just like the 12 or 13 Russians that Mueller indicted. You might remember back in 2018

0:38:39 Matt: For the similar offenses through the election interference they were running there. And of course, these are people that aren't in the United States and will never be in the States voluntarily. So, more than anything, this is kind of a shot, just kind of putting it out there to let everybody know that we know that they're doing this. This act has been updated over the years, but it is still essentially the same idea that if you're going to operate as an agent of a foreign principal, so this is extremely vague. And very much like with the Logan Act, there's a lot of places where you could challenge this. And it hasn't had a lot to challenge because between 1966 and 2015, the inspector general found that FARA had been actually prosecuted seven times.

0:39:18 Matt: And we had foreign influences in our elections, that the Mueller team started using it and that we started talking more about FARA as a thing. You remember Michael Flynn also with the same kind of issues. There have been any number of people that have had these kinds of allegations. But the idea is that you cannot be out there, and it's not just governments and not just foreign political parties, but even on behalf of corporations or foreign individuals, if you're putting out certain kinds of activities and doing certain things, you have to register and you actually tell the government you're doing it. You have to notify the attorney general when you're going to publish one of these things. And then you have to clearly say on the thing that you're publishing that this is what it is. This is what's behind it. And of course, nobody would ever really pay attention if you had to do that. So nobody wants to do dat.

0:39:57 Thomas: This is funny, important indictment tidbit. Early on, it talks about how Lauren Chen and Liam, what's his name, were having a hard time getting people to agree to do the work when they told them that it was for RT early on. So they're like, yeah, so we just stopped saying that. Cool. Interesting.

0:40:04 Matt: Donovan. Right. Easy. Yeah.

0:40:17 Thomas: And they aren't being indicted, Matt, right now, as we know of. So what is happening?

0:40:18 Matt: Works out fine. Yeah, so that's the real question. Question. Are a couple of different aspects here. Like I said, I think indictments could still be coming, but the of Justice started by charging two people who are not in the United States and like I said may never be, just as the Mueller team did. And these might never go forward, but they weren't gonna include U S citizens in this. That could be a separate indictment still, but they also could have some defenses. And I just want to talk about some of those. I don't think they're good defenses, but there may be some reasons they're hesitating. One of those is that there is an exemption. You're not acting as a foreign agent if you are an actual news source. Now, this could be an interesting open question, right? Now, I think you and I could be considered an actual new source. I hope so. And by the terms of the statute, we are doing our best.

0:40:58 Thomas: All right. Well, this thing's broken then yeah yeah repeal that statute I should never be considered a legitimate news source

0:41:08 Matt: Clearly written for old fashioned print journalism. Obviously, you don't want to be very careful with the First Amendment implications here. You don't want a future Trump administration prosecuting us because we happen to notice that Israel's committing war crimes every day, for example. Could come out and say that we're pro -Hamas, which is a registered political party, kind of thing. You could have all kinds of potential for abusing media sources if you didn't actually have some restriction on how this works. So news or press services engaged engaged, and bona fide news or journalistic activities, which are beneficially owned 80% by U.S. citizens, run by U.S. citizens, and most importantly, are not owned, directed, supervised, controlled, subsidized, or financed by any foreign principal or agent. So I think they automatically fail on that for the reasons we're talking about, because they knew that this is where the money was coming from.

0:41:46 Thomas: Interesting canadians yeah well and they're canadian so yeah they don't they aren't any of that

0:41:52 Matt: True, too. Yeah. My favorite case name for the month is Attorney General versus Irish People from 1986. Just going after all of them. Sorry, Irish People.

0:42:02 Thomas: He's just really racist against irish people like you can't just do a versus irish like no I'm doing it oh

0:42:06 Matt: It turns out the Irish People was actually the name of the newspaper, but they shortened it to Irish People Inc. because that's actually the company that ran it. It turns out that Irish People was being run by pretty much paid for by the IRA. And so the DIJ was very concerned about that. And this is an interesting sort of precedent here, where they tried to raise a First Amendment defense and tried to get summary judgment and say that you can't look behind us, we're a newspaper. And the D .C. Circuit found that even though Congress was particularly concerned about not imposing on the media, that there's still good reasons to look behind this kind of thing if you believe that a media source is being run by a foreign government or paid for by a foreign government. They did note, though, that mere receipt of a bona fide subsidy, not subjecting the recipient to the direction or control of the donor, does not require the the recipient of the subsidy to register. So this might be some defense they try to try to just say that we weren't actually acting in the direction. They gave us some advice. They tried to be a little pushy sometimes, but they weren't actual editing anything. Tim Pool and all the others have come out and said that there was no editorial control. Actually, the way that Tim Pool phrased it

0:43:06 Matt: Was that he always had full editorial control, which makes me wonder if maybe there was also partial editorial control from other people. That's a very loyal way to put it. I just trying to think of defenses they might have or reasons the DOJ might not have brought this.

0:43:07 Thomas: Not though yeah so a couple things first off um you talk about the first amendment thing and like oh what if they say we're hamas for blah blah I feel feel like getting paid by Hamas would be a different thing than like, I get that feels like a pretty easy distinction for me if Hamas was just paying us to say stuff, but they're not.

0:43:28 Matt: That'd be very different. I'm pretty sure we can commit to never getting paid by Hamas. I think we're good on that.

0:43:36 Thomas: So that's probably not going to happen. And then also there's a whole lot in the indictment about how much they were editing. You said yourself there, they posted this quote unquote editing company that was fake, that they, they did a lot of editing. They talk about how Now, it's interesting for as much as this indictment is just these Russians, there's a whole lot of language in there that as you are talking more about how the law works, very much seems intentionally put there to perhaps be useful for going after, at the very least, founders one and two at a later date. Right.

0:44:08 Matt: I think there's enough. And like I said, this is a triable issue because they could get into how much they were actually in agreement about that the funds were dependent on this. But the language we're talking about here where they're coming back and saying, you guys aren't posting enough. This isn't what the deal was. There's certainly enough here that you could imply, more than imply, what's going on. But it also has to be some willfulness. There has to be some intention. And that might be difficult to prove here. Again, though, we're talking about this whole fake profile thing that they had to know was fake. Know, just the what time is it in Moscow thing, like all these other things where you just know that there's Russians involved, openly saying that you're billing the Russians. I mean, this does seem pretty willful.

0:44:44 Thomas: Yeah. Can you can you clean up who you're talking about? Because I feel like there's going to be a huge distinction between founders one and two who really knew that this was Russians. I would be very surprised if there's no case against them. Now, the commentators, different story. I actually think that Dave I Rubin might have been as much as I think he's he's kind of vapid. Uh he might have been a smart criminal in this in that I believe what he kind of did in his mind was do a normal for him show that was just providing legitimacy to the network overall so if you look his defense is like oh it was some if you just look we talked about memes and we talked about whatever and it's like yeah that might have Been his way of doing this uh I think he knew exactly what he was doing but I think in his Mind he's doing just a show that that got brought attention to the channel overall and legitimized the channel a little bit. And then someone like Benny Johnson, though, I mean, the example where they want the Russians want someone to propaganda and he asks how high with the with the Moscow thing like

0:45:49 Thomas: That seems like a problem to me.

0:45:51 Matt: I still think, though, that there's no way they could actually charge the commentators. I think that would be a long shot. Because, again, you're talking about willfully failing to register, which means you would know that you would have to register because you're working directly as a principal agent of foreign government, an agent of a principal. So that

0:46:05 Thomas: Is that the only crime here is just that?

0:46:08 Matt: The money laundering, which again, I think speaks for itself. That's why I want to focus on the FARA allegations here. Founders one and two could still be liable for failure to register informational materials. What I was just talking about, that statute where you have to run everything by the attorney general and clearly watermark it and show that what you're publishing is backed by a foreign government. So I think they could be up for that charge in a way that maybe the Russians here wouldn't be because they're the ones putting it out. That could potentially be out there. And I do think that there is a thorough thing, potentially. Again, this is the completely new territory. We've had, like I said, newspapers investigated, we've had foreign PR people and lobbyists and everybody else looked into, but I don't think there's been anything with social media. I found a law review article to that effect talking about FARA and social media and how this is completely open territory. Nobody really knows.

0:46:53 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting. So but far is not like The Logan Act where it's like no one's ever really at all anything on this far. I mean, people have been convicted on this, right? It's just a question of not media exactly or what.

0:47:03 Matt: And not very many people. That's what I was saying about only seven real full cases until 2015. it certainly has happened a lot more in the Logan Act. And there's a lot lot of vagary in this. There's a lot of very vague language that could have a lot of wiggle room for people. And the willful standard of willfully failing to register is pretty high as well. So there are defenses available. I think that if these Russians happen to somehow ever be in front of a court, I think we've proven it in the indictment from what I can see here. I think there's a very strong case against Shannon Donovan as well, if it gets to that, and against any number of other people that have been taking this kind of money. But going to be a lot to sort out because there's just not a lot of precedent on some of these things. There's not a lot of precedence when it comes to something like posting on posting on Instagram, like we don't really know. And especially, there's a big question during the Mueller indictments, because all of those people were foreign nationals who were living abroad. And this is supposed to be for activity that occurs within the US. And the Mueller argument was that, well, they're posting, you know, using US servers, or they're hosting to US citizens, and that there's a lot engagement going on in the US around this stuff. But again, we don' get to test them, because those people are are never going to be brought to trial, almost certainly. So we have to just wait and see. But the within the US part does seem very significant to me. And I always thought that Mueller indictment was a stretch.

0:48:17 Thomas: So there's there's no other laws that like, is this the only thing we have? Like how I guess to a lot of people listening might be confused. How could this not be some sort of crime uh be able to be accepting russian money to to put out propaganda like how this the only thing is FARA that's it yeah

0:48:33 Matt: This was what Congress came up with, because there was nothing else at the time. And all they had at the times was the Espionage Act, which is when you're directly working against the US, or Sedition Act, when you try to overthrow the government. Obviously, that doesn't apply to this. You're just talking about trying to influence foreign policy and cause chaos. And I meant to mention before that it does say in the indictment, there's an interesting quote here from when there was an editor, they're just giving an example of how RT works. And there was another asking their official position on Brexit and another publication, another operation they were working on. And they came back and said that their official decision is whatever causes the most chaos. And that's what we're working with. And it's not a crime to put out disinformation at this point, just in and of itself, because we do have a very strong and robust First Amendment. And I do support that for the most part, obviously. Obviously, but this is very dangerous. This is very bad. And in the last couple of years, RT, before it was cut off, as you said, in 2022 after the invasion, RT and a couple of Chinese companies both were forced to register as foreign agents because it was so obvious that that's what they were doing. There's a different sort of set of analysis here when you're talking about U .S.-based. So this is a U .K.-based company. But as you say, though, they are foreign nationals technically. Are you sure that neither of them are U.S. citizens? Yes, you're right. They are both foreign nationals. That's an interesting aspect to this, super patriotic Canadians that love America.

0:49:43 Matt: It has just come out a few hours ago that Lauren Chen was just fired by The Blaze, as will happen. That is one one fewer of those.

0:49:48 Thomas: What that barely matters yeah

0:49:51 Matt: Yeah. Going to say, it's good to see some consequences, at least, that I think that these people will all be discredited, I hope, to some degree, but the people who want to listen to them will still probably want to listened to them somewhere.

0:50:02 Thomas: I well okay here's I you on the commentators it does sound like based on the law that you're You're talking about what I've had seems like a far stretch, but founders one and two, in addition to knowing all that was going on and having a lot of bad evidence, it was like, yeah, we stopped telling people that it was RT because like all that stuff. Also, for a moment, if we go with the, with that's, I think endorsed in the indictment, uh, they duped them. Isn't, is that not illegal? Would it not be illegal to dupe commentators one through six about who's paying them? Isn't that kind of some sort of fraud

0:50:35 Matt: Don't know, honestly. I mean, I'm not really sure. Don' t think I have an answer to that. I was trying to think about that, too. So there is some case law from both the Second and Third Circuit that I found, because this has come up before, about how connected are you to the point where you're actually an agent. Like, when should you have known? And there's a couple of different tests. One of them in the third circuit is the surrounding circumstances test, which I think there are plenty of surrounding circumstances here. If they'd asked a few of the right questions, they could have easily put it through. The other one is if they were consenting to be a foreign agent. That's in the second circuit, if they actually wanted to be. And we don't know. Those are both potentially triable issues. So I don't Know. A lot of open questions here and a lot about where this goes. But this case, I don' think, is going to be moving forward anytime soon. That's the problem. We can't get these people in there.

0:51:15 Thomas: Because it's just the Russians for now it would be more about if there's any other indictments this one obviously is just these Russians we don't do trials in absentia or whatever right I mean so I another question if this is all above board if the only thing that's illegal is that the Russians needed to register as foreign agents what would stop this from just continuing like pretend I feel like probably Ruben and them, I think it seems like he stopped four months ago and I think they probably likely I'm sure after they handed over a bunch of their stuff, I'm they stopped doing it. But like, it sounds like there's no reason this operation would even have to stop if it's not illegal.

0:51:53 Matt: I mean, I'm not sure what you mean.

0:51:54 Thomas: If Chen, who's now this might be her only job, by the way, she was making twenty five thousand a month for for this. So, uh, plus I think other incentives, um, they wanted to just keep doing this and, and Russia not be willing to pay them anymore once the cat's out of the bag, but setting that aside, let's say Russia was willing to still pay them. They're like, oh, it turns out, um, your audience doesn't read, doesn't know there was indictments. Uh, that's no idea.

0:52:16 Thomas: So we'll keep, keep doing this. What's to stop them.

0:52:19 Matt: The Russians who are paying them would still have to register as foreign agents under this indictment. And

0:52:23 Thomas: Right. Not going to. Now what happens?

0:52:25 Matt: Of course not. Yeah, but the US based people are certainly on notice at this this point that they're taking money from Russia. So at this point, they don't have that defense of not knowing. They would have to register. And at this point, there's not much debate at this point that this consists of informational material, whether or not it's media or journalism or anything else, that it would meet that definition of the statute. And so you would have to register it. You'd have to declare that this is informational material that's being paid for by the Russian government. So I think they'd be stupid.

0:52:51 Thomas: So because it's all above board even though it seems like they had all this information before founders one and two I don't see how this changes anything you're talking about but now that's official then it's like well now lauren chan and liam whatever would have to register as foreign agents

0:53:07 Matt: Yeah, they really, really are, I notice. And it'd be very stupid to keep doing it. I mean, they're not smart smart people, but I think they'd be very stupid. And also for what it's worth, I mean, it's going to be pretty easy to, I maybe in the rational world that I'd like to live in, it would be pretty easily to end their careers as commentators because you shouldn't ever be able to trust anything they ever say again, especially if they're talking about Russia. You know, and also how much would they voluntarily talk about Russia if they weren't getting paid? Who knows? No way to know.

0:53:11 Thomas: All right oh god no that's not happening again they just russia just needs them to continue to do stuff that they were doing. It's not necessarily all about Tucker Carlson grocery store videos.

0:53:40 Matt: And the official response by the Kremlin, by the way, is that this is a witch hunt designed to scare Americans. We have a quote here from their media person saying that there will be a response to the actions of the United States authorities, which directly contradict their obligations in the areas of providing free access to information and media pluralism. So throwing the First Amendment back at us and saying, look at you, restricting speech, shutting down the media.

0:53:45 Thomas: Of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Russia, who just did the prisoner swap for a journalist they had jailed for however long for doing nothing, is going to lecture us on freedom of speech. Believe there's no other reason that this is illegal. I guess maybe we need to pass another law. I am all for the freedom of speech and stuff. Yeah, sure. But this can't be right. This needs to be more clearly illegal, Matt.

0:54:29 Matt: With you, but it is also pretty dangerous. There are ways. It's hard to craft something that would not be a pretty big First Amendment issue. You know, you have to, I don't know. The foreign agent thing was a sort of a compromise to create a system by which we had to clearly identify propaganda so we knew where it was coming from. And I think that's the best they could do because there's so many gray areas. There's so Many things that are kind of in between propaganda, not propaganda. And as we're talking about so many people that are just voluntarily saying stupid things without getting paid for it. That's your right in America to say stupid things without getting paid for it. So who knows? Know if I necessarily support a stronger law for this, but I do support using it this way, the So

0:55:03 Thomas: I remember what I was going to ask. You tell, I don't know if you had a mind to read it this way, but I was curious curious there's anything we can glean about who might have been cooperating or not or if there's any of that um it clearly they got a hold of the stuff I don't know how easy that is normally maybe it is easy for law enforcement to do that but they had the records they had the ips they had to discord you know channels they had everything does do you think that means that somebody like dave rubin would have had to cooperate or what but

0:55:23 Matt: Not necessarily. I feel like they could have intercepted some communications or they were aware of RT activities in the United States and they were able to trace where the money was going. And DOJ is really good at this stuff. I'm sure enough subpoenas. don'T get the sense that there was any cooperation, but I think they just got it through regular law enforcement investigative methods.

0:55:44 Thomas: That includes like Like, hey, we're subpoenaing Dave Rubin for this records and stuff and him handing it over, though, right? It's not like you don't get the indication anyone. I guess, again, if legally it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot that could have gotten some of these folks in trouble, I guess they didn't have that much leverage other than being scary.

0:56:00 Matt: And I'm Liam Donovan really didn't even think they were committing a crime. Maybe they didn't really think about it. Who knows?

0:56:06 Thomas: Sure. This is crazy. All right. Well, there's not no Russian influence on the whole thing. Um know I think part of the message of russia gate was a scam russia russia all that was a scam hey that sounds like maybe a message that russia would have liked to get out there by the people it was influencing like maybe these people um so who knows you know like has been involved in this for a long time now ever the muller report it didn't clear like Trump of any allegations of working with Russia. Like, they were in there. People just decided it cleared him. And so this is maddening. Well, I hope we see more of this. You know, I hopefully at least, again, if we're just indicting Russians who will never be here, fine. I, I don'T care. Like I still hope that they plan on releasing more of these indictments so that we can know which media sources might be entirely bought and paid for.

0:56:55 Matt: Even partially bought and paid for. I'd like to know that too. And I think we'll be finding out for years to come. And certainly, I'm not going to do any defamation right now, but I can certainly think of a few. I'm certain we all can. So, let's see.

0:56:58 Thomas: Fair. Fair. Yeah. Yeah, wow. Well, this is crazy. Uh, thanks so much, Matt, for that breakdown. Wow. I, uh, I can't believe it. I don't even know what to say. Like, it's just, they're Russian propaganda. They don't, even notice it says something. If you didn't even notice what you were doing, you know, Doesn't that say something?

0:57:20 Matt: Yeah. So consistent with what the other right -wing commentators are saying who are also getting paid by Russia probably. So, you know, we're all just saying the same stuff.

0:57:25 Thomas: Horrible. Right. Well, thanks so much for listening, everyone. Please support the show, patreon.com/law, so we don't need to take Russian money, you know, because it's looking, you know. It's looking pretty attractive. Russia, if you're listening. No, please support us, patreon.com/law. So we never have to do that. Oh, that's it. Sorry. One more final note. There isn't the left version of Russia, unfortunately. There isn't there's the moneyed interest and the people who are wealthy and the and the evil people who have the money have that incentive and the means to be like yeah let's pay a bunch of assholes talent ass clowns to do this propaganda we have billions of dollars because we're an evil country there isn't the like Obama nation of, what, you know, the Ben... Bernie Sanders country that's like well no we want peace and happiness and we're willing to pay top dollar dollar to, it's like, there isn't the left version of that. Another reason Why this is so hard, you this in general, like our entire goal here of bringing clarity and empathy and actual insight to stuff is just so disadvantaged for so many reasons. And this is just one more of them, like come on, $400,000 a month.

0:58:36 Thomas: Crazy.

0:58:36 Matt: And you just, you have to watch some of this content, just like a few seconds at a time, just to get a bit, an idea of how much it's not worth that at all. It's just not worth it. But yeah. That's, That's what we got for today. But tune in Monday to find out why the man who killed his high school girlfriend and made a literal career out of lying about it is still guilty of murder. We'll get into Adnan Syed on Monday.

0:58:44 Thomas: All right oh boy now okay we're gonna need extra support now that we're doing this because that's man okay okay russia if uh we'll see everyone then

0:59:07 Matt: Dosvidanya.

0:59:08 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:59:25 Thomas: Wow. Wow. I didn't know they had bread, wine.