Beast Roger Sollenberger

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bad code

txt bak 12 22

hcr npr picked up 13 yo trump rape missing docs

HILLARY EPSTEIN DEPOS ASKED ABOUT UFO AND PIZZAGATE

CALLS VILE; her written st rips new one; comer told up front this will not go well, we are better at it; see hcr

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donors-to-tucker-carlsons-daily-caller-news-foundation-revealed?ref=home

ref roger s 12 22

this reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of [Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.

The non-profit that feeds the conservative Daily Caller website co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from entities and individuals who have received favorable coverage, including some who authored opinion pieces, a new filing shows.

The document—the Daily Caller News Foundation’s fiscal year 2021 tax statement—includes for thefirst time a list of donors to the 501(c)(3) organization, a group that is not required by law to disclose donor information. The filing also reveals that Carlson, who in 2020 announced he was leaving the Daily Caller and selling his stake in the website, is still the foundation chairman, and has not cut back on his hours.

When Carlson announced his split with the Daily Caller in 2020, he cited work constraints. “I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing,” the host told *The Wall Street Journal* at the time, explaining, “I wasn’t helping in any way, because I’ve got an hour to do every night” on his Fox News program. The tax filing, which covers the following year, shows he continued to hold the chairman position and put in the same hours as in all previous foundation filings—five hours a week.

Many of the foundation’s donors are tied to industries and issues that the Caller covers frequently. Most notable is the Ariel Corporation,which manufactures natural gas compressors and gave $135,000 to support the news organization—which has for years been criticized for its pro-carbon energy reporting and financial ties to the Koch brothers, the right-wing industrialists.

Other donors have an even closer relationship with the site, including some who have published pieces in their own names, without a disclosure of their financial ties. That, according to top journalism ethics expert Kelly McBride raises ethics questions.

“With any news organization that solicits donations, you really have to have an editorial policy that articulates how you separate out your loyalty to your audience and to your journalistic mission from your ties to your donors,” McBride, who is senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told The Daily Beast.

such a policy, she said, would ideally include an advisement to donors that they can’t influence editorial work, and a promise of transparency whenever there’s a conflict of interest.

“You’re looking for, first of all, separation between fundraising and the editorial product, and you’re also looking for clarity around what donors can expect in exchange for their donation, as well as transparency so the audience understands,” McBride said, adding that “a tagline on an op-ed would be an obvious transparency mechanism.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the Daily Caller and Carlson for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.

The journalistic and ethical standards published on the Daily Caller website don’t mention the foundation or any policy regarding donor influence over editorial content. But some donors have contributed content themselves.

For instance, RightForge, an internet infrastructure provider that caters to conservatives, in 2021 gave the foundation $7,500. In May of that year, the Daily Caller ran an op-ed from RightForge CEO Martin Avila, criticizing what Avila called the social media “witch trial” of former President Donald Trump. Months later, RightForge announced it would host Trump’s new social media network, Truth Social.

Real estate investor Adam Milstein gave the foundation $25,000 in 2021 and published an opinion piece that same year. The piece—titled, “Strategic Active Philanthropy Can Strengthen Our American Values”—includes a brief bio for Milstein, which describes him only as “an active philanthropist, an investor, and community leader.”

While the Daily Caller has been blasted for its affinity for the fossil fuel industry, the tax filing shows the Daily Caller News Foundation received financial backing from conservative green-energy group ClearPath Action, which gave $10,000 in 2021.

ClearPath has received favorable coverage from the Daily Caller, which earlier this year cited CEO Rich Powell in an article about his group, without a disclaimer. When Powell landed a Daily Caller op-ed earlier this month, the outlet added a note to the piece and his contributor page that read, “The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.” But those notes did not mention the financial relationship.

Then there’s Daniel Oliver, a Daily Caller regular contributor who also serves as trustee of the George E. Coleman Jr. Foundation, which gave the foundation $7,500 in 2021. The Daily Caller highlights some of Oliver’s rich experience in his bio—chair of the Education and Research Institute, director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and former chairmanships of the Federal Trade Commission under President Ronald Reagan and the National Review”—but doesn’t mention his role with the Coleman Foundation, or the donor relationship. (Buzzfeed News reported in 2019 that the foundation was a FDRLST Media investor, citing Oliver’s role.)

An even more influential GOP figure also appears in the filing, in the form of a $10,000 gift from CRC Advisors, a group headed up by arch-conservative megadonor and judicial activist Leonard Leo. The Daily Caller published a piece on Friday based on the results of a CRC poll, without disclosing the relationship. The two groups also show overlap in their employees, including current CRC vice president Kevin Daley, whose LinkedIn page says he left the Daily Caller in 2020 after four years as a reporter.

Power the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for the fossil fuel industry, donated $10,000 in 2021 and appears frequently enough in the Daily Caller that articles about the group have their own tag on the site. Since the donation, Power the Future Executive Director Daniel Turner has been cited in multiple Daily Caller pieces as an expert voice, without no mention of his status as a foundation donor.

Justin Olson , an elected Arizona utility regulatorand former Arizona GOP Senate candidate, gave the foundation $10,000 in 2021, listing his role at the time as an officer with right-wing youth activist group Turning Point USA.

The Daily Caller has given TPUSA favorable coverage, including after the donation. It also published an exclusive report in November 2021, the month after Olson announced his bid, revealing that a Scottsdale school board official had access to a so-called Google Drive “dossier” of personal information of vocal conservatives. (Police cleared the official of wrongdoing.) Olson tweeted the article when it came out, and expressed repeated outrage at the story on the platform, while a Twitter search shows he had not tweeted about schools previously.

The filing reveals the names of 2021 donors, but does not indicate whether they had donated before. Some of the contributors who present apparent conflicts of interest have had contributor roles in the publication previously, such as Leo and Adam Milstein, who published op-eds in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, when Power the Future announced its debut, the Daily Caller had the exclusive story.

There are, of course, numerous examples of media companies drawing funding from non-profit backers. But the Daily Caller and the DCNF have a unique relationship.

The foundation was created in 2011, a few years after Carlson founded the Daily Caller with then-partner Neil Patel, who still helms the operation. Thanks to the organization’s non-profit status, the foundation can subsidize not only publication costs, but the production of the actual content—with a built-in tax break.

Part of the foundation’s stated mission is to train young reporters, but its staff also generates content, which the Daily Caller then gets to post to its site for free. And while this content is nominally available to any publication,The Washington Postreported that it’s rarely used by anyone beyond the Daily Caller. A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy report found that the Daily Caller published “virtually everything” the nonprofit churned out.

However, other groups have taken advantage of the arrangement. The fact-checking site Snopes reported in 2019 that conservative political activists appropriated foundation content to populate a number of small-time websites styling themselves as local news outlets to smuggle political content to unsuspecting audiences.

The Daily Caller has also been called out for its financial and political ties to Trump’s campaign, which shelled out about $150,000 for access to the Daily Caller email list in the 2016 election, the Center for Media and Democracy reported.

One of the most familiar examples of a donor-funded news organization would be National Public Radio. While NPR gets some government grants, most of its money comes from private contributors—including from industries it reports on. But McBride noted that NPR puts disclaimers on stories that may present an apparent conflict.

“When you listen to public media, you hear that certain people give money for certain lines of reporting, like for climate change, et cetera. So you can fund a line of reporting, but you get no influence over how that news is presented, and public media also lets the audience know when that funding may intersects with the reporting,” McBride said.

It’s unclear whether any Daily Caller News Foundation donors tabbed their contributions for specific issues or series. But some well-known issues-driven names populate the list, including top GOP megadonor and election-denial enthusiast Dick Uihlein ($25,000), anti-climate change groups the Bradley Foundation ($50,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundation ($350,000), and conservative free-market underwriters Searle Freedom Trust ($230,000).

The source of the biggest donation, however, is still unknown. That would be the $400,000 the group received through DonorsTrust, a nonprofit known as a conservative dark money “ATM,” which allows funders to channel money anonymously to various recipients. The foundation also got a $300,000 injection from someone identified as “anonymous.”

The Daily Caller operation—which has been exposed forties to white nationalists—has been widely criticized on the left for its financial ties to energy interests, most specificallyCharles Koch, who has provided millions in funding over the years, and at one point reportedly accounted for more than 83 percent of the foundation’s annual revenue.

That bankroll swelled between 2020 and 2021. The foundation’s fiscal year 2020 filing shows $1.57 million in contributions, a number thatnearly doubled to $2.8 million the next year, according to the 2021 document. The foundation spent $1.4 million—$254,000 of it on fundraising—which, combined with previous assets, left it with a year-end balance of about $2.1 million.

A new analysis is dispelling the Republican Party's claims to justify the mediocre small-dollar donations it received during the latest election cycle.

The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger noted that Republicans have been quick to insist inflation is to blame for the problem. “It’s gas or this donation; its vacation with our children or this donation,” Zac Moffatt, CEO of top GOP fundraising firm Targeted Victory, insisted back in July.

But, digging a bit deeper, Sollenberger has managed to uncover other complications that are likely contributing to the political party's small-dollar challenges.

The Daily Beast's new analysis of data on the party's donors indicates "the Republican fundraising base this year actually skews a bit wealthier than that of Democrats."

As part of a collaborative effort with the Sterling Data Company —artificial intelligence analytics firm— the news outlet found: "The results give Republican small-dollar donors a slightly higher average (mean) annual household income—$50,849—about $1,000 more than their Democratic counterparts, who clocked in at $49,747."

According to Sollenberger, the findings contradict the Republican Party's attempt to rebrand itself as the political party that identifies with working and middle-class Americans.

He noted, "Not only does that finding undercut the fundraising excuse, it also complicates the GOP’s attempt to rebrand as the party of the working and middle class—and to cast Democrats as the party of the wealthy elite of cities and suburbs."

Sollenberger also explained how the latest findings obscure the party's desired public projections. He wrote, "The fact that Republican small-dollar donors on average make a little more money than their Democratic counterparts suggests that, when it comes to funding party politics, the GOP does not have the working class dominance it likes to project."

oops ...Christina Bobb chairs the Weekly Briefing on OAN. She’s also a lawyer by trade. And in recent days, she’s been spotted by several Trump officials at their office in the conference room with the rest of the president’s team. Her presence has caused a bit of confusion among actual campaign staff, who wondered if she was there to embed with the Trump legal “strike force” as a reporter.

But according to multiple knowledgeable sources, Bobb has actually been assisting the president’s long, long, long-shot legal effort—effectively taking on a secondary role as a pro-Trump lawyer even as she continues her job as a pro-Trump TV host.

“Christina is an attorney and has helped with some legal work in her personal capacity and not on behalf of OAN,” Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to Trump and his 2020 campaign, told The Daily Beast on Monday afternoon. ...https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-year-of-batshit-crazy-at-one-america-news-trumps-new-favorite-cable-news-channel Such an arrangement would be absolutely unthinkable in other newsrooms. But OAN’s editorial stance is so committedly pro-Trump that it almost, almost makes sense. Bobb certainly hasn’t hidden her feelings for the president or his current legal endeavors. Even when compared to the output of other OAN on-air staff, she has shown intense commitment to the premise that Trump actually won the election that he clearly lost.<...second presidential term. During on-air segments, she has suggested that there was indeed a “massive amount” of voter fraud both in Trump’s election and potentially in others, including former Republican candidate Kim Klacik’s race in Maryland (she lost her race in a heavily Democratic district by over 40 percentage points).

In recent segments about the Trump campaign’s legal efforts, Bobb has not disclosed that she has been an informal consultant to those very same efforts.

During her weekend show, she interviewed Ellis—her current legal collaborator—about recent developments in the campaign’s challenges to election results in several states. But she did not note during the segment that she had any sort of role in the campaign’s legal fight. On Twitter, Bobb has cheered on the Trump legal team, even praising its performance in a press conference in which such wild conspiracies were spun about voting corruption that the president himself reportedly thought it too far fetched. Once more, she never disclosed that she has been working with that team.

Since Friday, Bobb has not responded to multiple messages seeking comment on this story. Reached by phone on Monday, network founder and president Charles Herring declined to comment on his employee’s activity with the Trump legal team, requesting The Daily Beast email him instead. He did not respond to an email.

Bobb’s cozy relationship with the president’s legal team may be the most brazen example of the cozy relationship Trump and his campaign have maintained with members of conservative media. But it’s hardly the first.

As The Daily Beast reported in 2018, the president has regularly consulted with Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, who would call in to private Oval Office meetings and advise the White House informally on various policies. The president also regularly canvases his friends in conservative media about administration policy and messaging, phoning Fox News stars like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, and hosting Fox personality Laura Ingraham at the White House to advocate for the use of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.

### Trump Campaign Disavows Its Own Election-Conspiracy Lawyer

NO LONGER OURS

Lachlan Markay

Other news networks have allowed their personalities to dip their toes into partisan political activity, though to varying degrees. During the 2020 election, CNN contributor Ana Navarro hosted a virtual fundraiser for Biden, a move that the network said did not violate their policies because she was not paid. High-profile on-air personality Van Jones also advised Jared Kushner on the police-reform executive order signed by Trump earlier this year.

To avoid conflicts of interest, news networks generally do not allow their on-air contributors to endorse or run for office or work on political campaigns or political action committees while appearing as a paid analyst. Over the past month, since Joe Biden’s election, MSNBC has cut ties with at least four contributors who have taken advisory roles in the president-elect’s transition effort.

But OAN stands out in its on-air fealty to Trump, even when compared to the standards observed by its competitors in pro-MAGA right-wing media.

Two days before Election Day, The Daily Beast asked OAN president Charles Herring if the network would call the election for Trump if the president, as he had planned to do, declared victory preemptively. Herring responded by messaging a lengthy statement that included, “OAN is a subscriber to the Associated Press’ Votecast data and Votecount elections results technology," and that for "Winner Projections," the network "will be utilizing primarily Associated Press’ Votecast data and Votecount." (The statement also references the “expert analysis” provided by “Christina Bobb, host of Weekly Briefing.”)

In propping up an alternate media universe in which Trump didn’t lose, OAN is ignoring its own system of data collection. The AP has long since called the 2020 presidential election for Biden.

promote 2nd, press on ukraine nunes lawsuit

a corp that hired pvt security, sold rights to another corp oann, which is being sued for libel but raising dark $ for audit?? ~ trans b/c proprietary, NDA's

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/arizona-audit-oan/

no twt

With devotees of former Present Donald Trump currently conducting a blatantly partisan audit of the 2020 election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, One America News Network has been offering glowing coverage of that event. Journalist Sarah Mimms, in an article published by BuzzFeed News on May 18, examines the connection between OAN employees and the audit — which was ordered by Republicans in the Arizona State Senate and is being conducted by the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas, whose founder Doug Logan is a far-right Trump supporters who pushed the former president's false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

"Two reporters at One America News, a far-right TV station, are running a dark money organization that they say is helping fund a counter-reality 'audit' that former President Donald Trump and his supporters believe will overturn Arizona's 2020 election results in his favor," Mimms explains. "What's more, one of those reporters, Christina Bobb, is the network's most visible correspondent covering the very 'audit' that she is helping scare up money for on OAN's airwaves, while she and the network enjoy unique access to the process where private contractors and volunteers are searching for fraud and have examined ballots for nonexistent watermarks and 'bamboo fibers.' OAN has a deal as the exclusive livestream partner for the audit."

Bobb hosts a program on OAN called "Weekly Briefing," and Mimms points out that on April 9, she tweeted that she had founded a group devoted to promoting the audit: Voices and Votes. According to Bobb, the group raised $150,000 that day.

"According to its website," Mimms observes, "Voices and Votes is run by Bobb as the CEO and president, as well as OAN's White House correspondent Chanel Rion, who is listed as the chief marketing officer, and Courtland Sykes, Rion's fiancé, who is listed as the group's chief operations officer."[twt dANGEROUSLY UNDERFUNDED"

although the Maricopa County audit is being slammed as a joke by Trump's critics on both the left and the right, legitimate audits or recounts of the election results in Arizona have been conducted — and they showed that now-President Joe Biden won Arizona fair and square. Biden's Arizona victory was reported by the decision desk at Fox News on Election Night 2020 and was later certified by conservative Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

Mimms explains why the current Maricopa County audit is a "farce," noting, "It's important to pause here and note that the audit itself is not really an audit at all. What happened is the Arizona Senate, which is controlled by 16 Republicans to 14 Democrats, sent a subpoena to Maricopa County — which was upheld by a judge, forcing the county to hand over 2.1 million ballots,as well as vote tabulators and a bunch of election data. The 'audit,' which is being run by outside contractors hired by the Senate, will have no force or effect on the 2020 election results; Joe Biden is president, andArizona already did an audit of Maricopa County in the presidential race and didn't find a single ballot discrepancy.The county itself, which is not involved in the current Senate audit either, also hired two independent firms to review its elections equipment in February, which came back clean as well."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/arizona-election-results-oan-reporters-fundraising

two reporters at One America News, a far-right TV station, are running a dark money organization that they say is helping fund a counter-reality “audit” that former president Donald Trump and his supporters believe will overturn Arizona’s 2020 election results in his favor.

What’s more, one of those reporters, Christina Bobb, is the network’s most visible correspondent covering the very “audit” that she is helping scare up money for on OAN’s airwaves, while she and the network enjoy unique access to the process where private contractors and volunteers are searching for fraud and have examined ballots for nonexistent watermarks and “bamboo fibers.” OAN has a deal as the exclusive livestream partner for the audit.

Christina Bobb hosting her show Weekly Briefing on OAN pix]

Bobb has not made a secret of her work to keep that audit going. On April 9, she tweeted that she’d founded a group called Voices and Votes to help the Republican-led Arizona Senate complete its audit of the vote in Maricopa County. The group reached its $150,000 fundraising goal that same day,according to Bobb, and she’s continued soliciting money for the audit since, both on Twitter and on air.

According to its website, Voices and Votes is run by Bobb as the CEO and president, as well as OAN’s White House correspondent Chanel Rion, who is listed as the chief marketing officer, and Courtland Sykes, Rion’s fiancé, who is listed as the group’s chief operations officer. The group’s website also says that Voices and Votes is registered as a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning its donors will never be made public.

That also means that the group will never have to give an accounting of how much money it has raised or where that money actually went. Bobb did not respond when BuzzFeed News asked how much Voices and Votes has brought in, but insisted that all of the money raised “has gone to the auditors.”Cyber Ninjas, the firm leading the audit, and its CEO did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had received money from Voices and Votes.

twt]

it’s important to pause here and note that the audit itself is not really an audit at all. What happened is the Arizona Senate, which is controlled by 16 Republicans (to 14 Democrats) sent a subpoena to Maricopa County, which was upheld by a judge, forcing the county to hand over 2.1 million ballots, as well as vote tabulators and a bunch of election data. The “audit,” which is being run by outside contractors hired by the Senate, will have no force or effect on the 2020 election results; Joe Biden is president, and Arizona already did an audit of Maricopa County in the presidential race and didn’t find a single ballot discrepancy. The county itself, which is not involved in the current Senate audit either, also hired two independent firms to review its elections equipment in February, which came back clean as well.

On Monday, Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, which is majority Republican, wrote a scathing letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, calling the audit a threat to democracy and telling her to end it. “The Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. ... The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled,” the board wrote.

But, as Bobb told her OAN audience a few weeks ago, the new Senate audit will “unravel the Democrats' schemes from 2020” and Trump “will determine our next House and Senate” — whatever that means. In the same segment, she backtracked slightly, saying that “maybe” the audit would show there was no fraud. “Maybe,” she said, laughing, “Biden legitimately won Arizona.”

Needless to say, no legitimate newsroom would allow its reporters to fundraise for an actual news event they’re covering. Nonetheless, Bobb has for Voices and Votes,actively fundraising to keep the story she is covering going. Bobb tweeted as recently as April 28 that the audit isn’t “fully funded yet” and asked followers to “please help get this audit across the finish line!” That weekend she show to her reporting from the audit and an interview with the Arizona Republican Party chair.

[twt]

after reaching her $150,000 goal, Bobb announced the group’s “second pledge,” this time without naming a monetary goal, tweeting, “Let’s get this audit funded!” with a donation link.

photos of herself alongside some of the architects of the audit and thanking those “true Patriots” for making it happen.

Bobb and OAN are getting access to the audit that no other news outlets have, reporters on the ground say. While reporters at other Arizona and national media outlets have had to rotate through a few select spots to cover the audit, Bobb and a writer with the Gateway Pundit, another pro-Trump outlet, are exempted from that pool. She reported live from the coliseum where the audit is taking place every day last week.

Bobb disputed that she and OAN had received any “special treatment” in an email to BuzzFeed News on behalf of Voices and Votes. While she acknowledged that she had different access than members of the Arizona press corps, she said her access to cover the audit depended on “availability.” “I have been denied access at certain times and had to go on different days or at different times,” she wrote. “I am not permitted to attend whenever I want.”

Bobb also noted that OAN is not “in any way” affiliated with her fundraising group “other than allowing me to mention my efforts on air” and said the network “has not received anything as a result of Voices and Votes' donations.”

“I have openly and honestly disclosed all my efforts on air, and have handled the funds exactly as I said that I would,” she said.

Rion did not respond to requests for comment. Fann, the Senate president, deferred questions about OAN’s access to former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, who is serving as an audit liaison. Bennett did not respond to multiple requests.... ...;that Arizona senators won’t say what would happen if the audit does find “some type of fraud” — which won’t happen, because legitimate audits have already been conducted — and that senators have said this audit is about promoting trust in future elections, not about 2020. “They would not commit to saying that they would overturn anything, but they did say they were certainly taking a look at it,” she said, citing anonymous Arizona legislators.

OAN did not respond to requests for comment on the conflict between Bobb and Rion’s work for their network and their affiliation with Voices and Votes or whether the network has a conflict-of-interest policy.

The audit itself has so far been a farce, enough so that one of the Republican state senators who voted for it told the New York Times that in practice the audit is “ridiculous” and “makes us look like idiots.” At one point, workers were checking for any traces of bamboo in the ballot paper in a frankly stupid and racist attempt to test a conspiracy theory that thousands of illegal ballots were shipped in from Asia. They were shining UV lights on ballots for reasons that weren’t really explained by officials at the time but seemed to line up with a QAnon-adjacent theory that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had watermarked real ballots so the Democrats’ fraudulent ones could be easily found. That prompted the Maricopa County Elections Department to publicly post a fact check: “There are NO watermarks on Maricopa County ballots.”

Then there’s the firm that the Arizona Senate hired to run the whole thing, Cyber Ninjas, owned by Doug Logan. As the Arizona Mirror reported, Logan repeatedly posted conspiracies about the election being stolen and falsehoods about Dominion Voting Systems on his since-deleted Twitter account. Logan is also the author of a three-page document of “election fraud facts” posted to former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s website intended for senators to use in explaining why they would object to the election results and try to give the White House back to Trump, the Mirror also reported. Logan, it's worth noting, stood behind the document in a statement to the Mirror.

His firm and three others are now paying contractors $15 an hour and bringing in volunteers to examine the ballots — among them was a former state representative who lost his 2020 race and was also filmed on the Capitol steps during the Jan. 6 insurrection. With the process taking way longer than expected, a big bill is coming and it’s unclear who is paying it.

The Arizona Senate only gave $150,000 in taxpayer money to the project, which they knew was a laughable sum for an election audit of this size, and is allowing Cyber Ninjas to raise the rest from whoever. And several prominent Trump supporters have stepped up. Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who has peddled some of the more out-there election conspiracy theories, kicked in $1 million and has his own dark money group raising funds, per the Arizona Republic. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told the Daily Beast that he had donated. And Lin Wood, an attorney who filed a bunch of lawsuits trying to overturn the election, told Talking Points Memo and confirmed to BuzzFeed News that his 501(c)(4) #FightBack had donated to Bobb’s Voices and Votes.

Meanwhile, reporters at other outlets who are not paying for the audit had to fight to cover it at all. At one point, the Arizona Senate told media that they could only have access to the audit if they signed up for at least five six-hour shifts as volunteer observers. To be clear, they wouldn’t then get to report on the audit, their only access under this plan was as workers for the audit they were trying to cover. And, the Senate said, they could not bring laptops or cellphones or even a paper and pen with them. “People observing even executions are allowed to bring their notebooks in with them,” Arizona Capitol Times reporter Julia Shumway, who has since covered the audit, told BuzzFeed News.

Shumway and her colleagues eventually did get press access to the audit, but only after the Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association got lawyers involved. Now, reporters have to pool their resources with one print journalist, one videographer, and one photographer allowed into the audit at any given time, and they must be escorted, even to the bathroom, Shumway said. Meanwhile, Bobb and a reporter for the Gateway Pundit can report outside of the pool.

When asked about the discrepancy in treatment for OAN and the Gateway Pundit and every other news outlet, Fann told PBS that OAN was given livestreaming rights to the audit because “they have covered this from the beginning. They are one of the firms that came in right off the bat and said we will help do all the 24-hour video so everybody has access to this 24/7, that they wanted to be a part of it. So I don’t think that’s a bad idea. If there was another network had come up and said that first, we would have went with them probably.”

She later accused other, unnamed reporters of trespassing and said they had worried about too many members of the media “walk[ing] all over the place and tak[ing] pictures.” Asked if she had any similar concerns about OAN, she responded simply, “No, huh-uh. Nope.”<...The Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association brought the legal fight to get reporters access to the audit. A previous version of this story was unclear on who led the legal effort.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-host-christina-bobb-has-been-helping-rudy-giuliani-with-trumps-legal-efforts

as it seeks to overturn the election results and keep President-elect Joe Biden from assuming power, President Donald Trump’s legal team, fronted by lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and until recently Sidney Powell, has been operating out of a conference room at the 2020 campaign’s downsized headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Aiding Trump’s so-called “elite strike force” team in that effort has been an on-air host at One America News Network (OAN), a vociferously pro-Trump cable-news channel that has been endorsed by the president.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/without-merit-dan-bongino-ordered-to-pay-the-daily-beast-31-000-for-filing-frivolous-defamation-lawsuit/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-hype-coronavirus-and-giuliani-conspiracies

db no lnx pix docs

no lnx

Russian Trolls Hype Coronavirus and Giuliani Conspiracies

CAUGHT

EXCLUSIVE

A Daily Beast investigation reveals dozens of Russian accounts pushing disinformation on everything from Joe Biden to the origin of the novel coronavirus.

Adam Rawnsley

Updated Apr. 09, 2020 4:27PM ET / Published Apr. 09, 2020

Suspected Russian government trolls are trying to pin the COVID-19 pandemic on the Pentagon; hyping Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories about collusion between Democrats and Ukraine; and trying to meddle in European elections, an investigation by The Daily Beast reveals.

Working with researchers from the disinformation-tracking firmGraphika, The Daily Beast found at least 20 fake news articles pushed by over 40 suspected Kremlin-backed personas across dozens of social media networks like Facebook, Reddit, Medium, and smaller web forums.

“This looks like a Russian disinformation operation we call ‘Secondary Infektion’ that's been running for years,” said Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, who has been investigating the operation since Facebook exposed a first set of accounts in May 2019. “It uses blogging platforms as the soft underbelly of the internet, planting false stories based on forged documents or leaks that never happened. The fakes mostly appear designed to trigger tensions between European countries, or between Europe and the United States, but they were generally too clumsy to be believed.”

Nimmo and other disinformation researchers first identified the Secondary Infektion campaign in 2019, which uses forgeries and fake articles to push Moscow-friendly propaganda through fictional personas. The troll personas and articles identified by The Daily Beast followed the same Secondary Infektion pattern identified by Graphika and others. Trolls would set up one-time-use accounts at a handful of outlets in specific places—from obscure forums like the DebatePolitics and DefendingTheTruth to larger platforms like Medium and Reddit—and post articles and forgeries in broken English just minutes after creating their accounts.

The cluster of personas and articles identified by The Daily Beast date back through 2016. They add to a growing body of evidence that shows Russian information operations didn’t stop after Moscow’s interference in the last presidential campaign, but rather continued on, spreading to other countries. The trolls in this campaign forged letters and screenshots in an attempt to meddle in elections in Sweden and Latvia, touted Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine conspiracy theories, and tried to sow confusion about a former suspect in the leak of NSA hacking tools.

Pinning COVID-19 on the Pentagon

As COVID-19 ravaged China and began to spread around the globe, the State Department issued cryptic warnings in February and March that Russia was trying to pin the virus on the U.S. both through its overt and covert propaganda organs. In one February briefing, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker called out the propaganda campaign in vague terms and claimed that Moscow was "once again choosing to threaten public safety by distracting from the global health response" with a COVID-19 disinformation campaign.

American diplomats offered no specifics, but just a few days before Reeker’s briefing, a fake story bearing the hallmarks of Secondary Infektion trolls surfaced in Russian-language blogging platforms.

The story, posted to Russian-language blogs and Reddit by multiple fake personas, tries to pin the blame on the COVID-19 outbreak on the U.S. and Kazakhstan by casting the virus as the byproduct of a U.S. nonproliferation program in the country. The trolls pointed to social media posts by a group of hackers calling themselves “Anonymous Kazakhstan.”

It was posted on exactly the same mix of blogging platforms by exactly the same sort of fake persona. If this wasn't Secondary Infektion, it was someone trying really hard to look like them.

— disinformation researcher Ben Nimmo

It’s a well-documented tactic among Secondary Infektion posts, which often use fictitious Anonymous-style hacker groups from a range of different countries as the source of forged documents, according to Graphika.

In this case, the authors of the story claim that, in the course of hacking employees of the U.S.-funded Central Reference Laboratory in Almaty, Kazakhstan, they discovered that the lab was responsible for the release of COVID-19 into the public.

Rather than a nefarious factory for new bioweapons, the Central Reference Laboratory in Almaty is part of a U.S.-funded nonproliferation effort aimed at giving steady employment to biologists in Kazakhstan, once home to Soviet biological weapons programs, and keep them from seeking employment in rogue state or terrorist bioweapons efforts. The authors of the fake story appeared to aim at ginning up fear and opposition to the U.S. funding and warned that the fake viral leak could prompt sanctions from China, an important ally and source of investment in Kazakhstan.

“This story only circulated in Russian, unlike other Secondary Infektion claims, but it was posted on exactly the same mix of blogging platforms by exactly the same sort of fake persona. If this wasn't Secondary Infektion, it was someone trying really hard to look like them," said Nimmo.

Others may have reached the same conclusion as The Daily Beast. In a recent update, cybersecurity firm FireEye vaguely referenced a disinformation campaign it attributed to Secondary Infektion which included “a false hacktivist persona to spread the conspiracy theory that the U.S. developed the coronavirus in a weapons laboratory in Central Asia.”

Election Meddling and Spy Games

The trolls behind the COVID-19 article and others identified by The Daily Beast are most likely part of a well-documented group of Russia-linked disinformation actors known as Secondary Infektion. The group, labeled after the Soviet Union’s “Operation Infektion” disinformation campaign, which sought to blame the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the '80s on the U.S. military’s former biological weapons research lab, was first labeled by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab in June 2019 after Facebook suspended a number of accounts operated by the campaign a month prior.

The group typically works in three stages, according to Nimmo. Propagandists first forge documents to further their narratives and plant them on small, obscure blogging platforms with single-use accounts created on the day of posting and never used again. Next, the authors translate the articles accompanying forgeries into as many as half a dozen languages like Russian, Spanish, and German and further spread the fake stories. Finally, trolls take the articles to larger social media platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, often creating still more single-use accounts to do it.

Secondary Infektion is notable for the sweeping breadth of forums it employs in order to spread its articles.“Pretty well all serious influence operations these days are cross-platform, but Secondary Infektion took it to extremes. They worked across literally scores of sites and platforms in different languages," Nimmo explained. Researchers have tracked the campaign’s articles across scores of often niche and obscure platforms, from British college forum TheStudentRoom to an Austrian local news platform, Mein Bezirk.

The network of Russian-linked trolls identified by The Daily Beast goes beyond just a single post on COVID-19 conspiracies. From at least 2016 through this year, trolls sought to spread disinformation on elections in the U.S. and Europe, pit Western countries against each other, and ruin Ukraine’s international reputation.

In December 2019, as impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump took place, Russian-linked trolls spread an article that falsely claimed Democrats colluded with a former KGB officer during the 2016 elections. The article, “Former KGB agent sponsored Democrats in the 2016 election,” falsely accuses Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk of having worked for Soviet intelligence during the Cold War and financing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

The theme of Democratic collusion with Ukraine to undermine Trump’s candidacy, often touted by President Trump and his allies, is a theme Russian intelligence operatives have pushed for years, according to The New York Times.

Relying on Rudy

Many of the Secondary Infektion stories used phony screengrabs or forged documents to further their narrative. By contrast, the authors of the fake KGB support story relied on the conspiracy theorizing of Rudy Giuliani and the Trump-cheering cable news channel OANN to push their story.

“Rudy Giuliani's recent visit to Ukraine exposed many secrets of the Democratic Party, which is trying to distract the public from its crimes through the impeachment of the incumbent US president,” the trolls wrote alongside links to OANN’s coverage of the impeachment scandal.

The Secondary Infektion crew also ventured beyond the relitigation of America’s 2016 presidential election to meddle in elections in Europe.

In advance of Sweden’s 2018 elections, the trolls used a series of fake conspiracies focused on the right wing nationalist Sweden Democrats party to interfere in Sweden’s 2018 election.Secondary Infektion propagandists forged a fake letter in stilted English purporting to show Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning Poland’s foreign minister that “Russian special services are going to provide technical and material support to the Swedish Democrats and help them in the election campaign” as part of a hacking campaign.

“It bears the digital hallmarks of forgery,” said Sam Meyer, a research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Meyer ran the Pompeo letter image through the Tungstène imagery analysis software and found that the image was based on a digital template bearing the State Department letterhead and Secretary Pompeo’s signature with the text digitally added separately.

Many of the the Secondary Infektion articles identified by The Daily Beast appeared aimed at dividing the U.S. from its allies in Europe.

Since its forces began occupying eastern Ukraine, Russia has tried to oppose the U.S. sale of lethal aid to Ukrainian forces, particularly the Javelin anti-tank missiles which could be useful in fending off Russian armor. As the Trump administration mulled the prospect of a sale in the fall of 2017, Russian trolls published a forged screenshot pretending to come from the Twitter account of U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria. “Javelins from Ukraine will help #YPG/#YPJ fighters defeat #IS in Deir al-Zour. #JazeeraStorm #defeatDaesh.”

Except the tweet was never sent and neither American nor Ukrainian forces ever transferred Javelins to partner forces in Syria. The apparent goal of the forgery and accompanying article was an attempt to paint the Trump administration’s arms sale to Ukraine as reckless and to create tensions between the U.S., Ukraine, and Turkey, which has strongly objected to transfers of less sophisticated arms to Kurdish forces in Syria.

But not all of the articles fit into such neat thematic categories. At least one appeared aimed at diverting attention from or at least provoking confusion about a criminal case involving the theft of classified information from the National Security Agency.

Federal prosecutors charged former NSA contractor Hal Martin in 2016 with unlawfully taking home vast amounts of classified NSA data. Martin had initially come under suspicion as a result of an investigation into the publication of classified NSA hacking tools released by a group calling itself “The Shadow Brokers,” which some believe may be a front for Russian intelligence.

Martin was never charged with involvement in the Shadow Brokers leak. But in November 2016, a month after prosecutors arrested him, personas bearing the hallmarks of the Secondary Infektion campaign began posting articles falsely claiming that Martin had betrayed the identities of undercover CIA officers associated with the Bush-era torture program.

Another Secondary Infektion article took aim at what would seem an unlikely target for the Kremlin: former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In 2018, while Medvedev was still serving as prime minister of Russia, the trolls used a fake screenshot of a nonexistent article from The Guardian to cast doubt on his political future, writing that Medvedev was “facing a whole bunch of problems, from lack of financing to health issues and even alcohol.”

Bang for the buck?

For all the effort put into the troll campaign, the impact appears to have been small to nonexistent. In 2016, IRA trolls operating Twitter and Facebook accounts racked up millions of views throughout the U.S. presidential election, but the greater scrutiny of Russian disinformation and more cautious operational security practices used by the Secondary Infektion have come at a steep cost in terms of reach.

None of the articles or forgeries identified by The Daily Beast appear to have been picked up and amplified by news outlets or social media users outside of Secondary Infektion.

"One of the biggest mysteries about Secondary Infektion is what the operators thought they were doing,” said Nimmo. “I've never seen so little bang to the buck."

In the history of documented Secondary Infektion articles, only one appears to have gained any traction—the leak of authentic U.K.-U.S. trade documents shortly before the British general election in 2019.

[Leaked: Secret Documents From Russia’s Election Trolls

RED SPILL

Spencer Ackerman,

Gideon Resnick,

Ben Collins

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

MOONLIGHTING

Kevin Poulsen]

The reach of articles identified by The Daily Beast is much shorter. The posts, published to obscure and niche web forums like WorthyChristianForums and DefendingTheTruth, garnered just a few dozen views according to view counters available on some of the sites. Some generated agreement or at least debate among a handful of forumgoers and social media users where they were posed, but they also generated derision and skepticism as well.

“Arthur,” one Reddit commenter wrote under a Secondary Infektion persona’s piece about Brexit, “you've done something that I couldn't imagine was possible. You've written a piece so poor that brexiteers and remainers can unite around how dreadful your opinions are. There's something in here to make everyone scoff.”

Others social media users noticed the pattern of single-use accounts posting articles on known Russian themes and found them appropriately suspicious. “New Reddit User. 1 post. Article about the east.” a Redditor commented on a post trying to stir up tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. “You almost got me Putin.”

Adam Rawnsley

adam.rawnsley@thedailybeast.com

dunno but jaylo headline banner

https://deadline.com/2019/09/rachel-maddow-msnbc-one-america-news-network-1202729817/

One America News Network, one of the rivals to Fox News for right-leaning viewers, filed a defamation claim against Comcast, MSNBC and Rachel Maddow on Monday, over Maddow’s claim that the conservative channel “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego (read it here) claims that the defendants retaliated against One America because its president, Charles Herring, called out MSNBC’s parent company. Comcast, “for their anti-competitive censorship” in refusing to carry the conservative channel. In an email to Comcast’s president of content acquisition, Gregory Rigdon, Herring had sought carriage on Comcast’s cable platforms and stated his concern that the cable giant “opposes including another conservative counter channel to counter MSNBC,” according to the lawsuit.

A week later, Maddow opened her show by telling her audience that OANN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda,” according to the lawsuit.

“Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government,” Maddow said in the July 22 segment.

Skip Miller, a partner at Miller Barondess who represents OANN, said in a statement: “One America is wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego. They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have nothing to do with the Russian government. This is a false and malicious libel, and they’re going to answer for it in a court of law.”

Maddow made the claim after the Daily Beast ran a story by Kevin Poulsen reporting that one of One America’s on-air reporters, Kristian Brunovich Rouz, also was on the payroll for Sputnik, the Kremlin news outlet. One America then demanded a retraction.

But One America said in the lawsuit that “Rouz has never been a staff employee of Sputnik News. He worked as a freelancer for Sputnik News and his work there had no relation to his work for OAN. Rouz submitted articles to Sputnik on his own and would receive approximately $40 if the articles were accepted.”

The lawsuit seeks more than $10 million in damages.

A spokeswoman for MSNBC did not immediately return a request for comment.

ref

LOUIS R. MILLER (State Bar No. 54141) smiller@millerbarondess.com

AMNON Z. SIEGEL (State Bar No. 234981) asiegel@millerbarondess.com

MILLER BARONDESS, LLP 1999 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, California 90067 Telephone: (310) 552-4400 Facsimile: (310) 552-8400 Attorneys for Plaintiff Herring Networks, Inc

...

(“Rouz”). Rouz collects and analyzes articles from other sources and writes articles

based on those sources for OAN. Rouz’s articles go through OAN’s editorial

process before they are published. Rouz does not have decision-making authority

with respect to the content that is aired on OAN.

Rouz was born in the Ukraine. When he moved to the United States,

he had no friends or family here. To make ends meet, Rouz began writing articles

for Sputnik News in 2014. Sputnik News is affiliated with the Russian government,

but Rouz chose the topics and viewpoints of the articles he wrote for Sputnik News.

Rouz’s articles provided updates about various topics in global economics and

international finance.

The headlines of Rouz’s articles for Sputnik News include: “N. Ireland

Pessimistic About UK Economy Amid Weaker Regional Growth – Poll”; “South

Africa’s Struggling Utility Eskom Raises $361 Mln to Keep Lights On”; “Japan Q1

GDP Beats Expectations Despite Weak Consumer Spending”; and “Turkish Central

Bank Relaxes Policy, Warns Against FX Purchases to Support Lira.”

Rouz has never been a staff employee of Sputnik News. He worked as

a freelancer for Sputnik News and his work there had no relation to his work for

OAN. Rouz submitted articles to Sputnik on his own and would receive

approximately $40 if the articles were accepted.

On July 22, 2019, the Daily Beast—an online publication—published

an article entitled, “Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid

Journalist.” The article was written by Kevin Poulsen (“Poulsen”), also known as

“Dark Dante”—the first computer hacker ever to be charged with espionage against

the United States government.

28. Poulsen spent 17 months as a fugitive from the law before being

arrested in 1991. In 1995, Poulson pleaded guilty to seven counts of conspiracy,

fraud and intercepting wire communications. He received the longest prison

sentence ever for a computer hacker at that time. United States law enforcement

...referred to him as “the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.”

Poulsen’s article identified Rouz as “on the payroll” of Sputnik News.

But Poulsen did not identify any facts tying Rouz’s work for OAN to Sputnik News

or the Russian government; and that is because there never have been, and are, no

such facts.

B. Rachel Maddow

Maddow is a liberal television host with a show on MSNBC called

“The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Maddow is obsessed with conspiracy-mongering about a connection

between Russia and President Donald Trump. Her obsession is so pronounced that

even other media outlets have called her out for her lack of journalistic integrity.

On March 28, 2019, for example, the Guardian published an editorial

entitled, “Will Rachel Maddow Face a Reckoning Over Her Trump-Russia

Coverage?” And a March 27, 2019, editorial published in Politico noted: “For the

past two years, Rachel Maddow has been a hero of her own spy-thriller.” The

editorial details Maddow’s “deep delusion” with Russian conspiracies.

On April 12, 2017, The Intercept published an article entitled

“MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Sees A ‘Russia Connection’ Lurking Around Every

Corner.” The article noted that MSNBC and Maddow have “played a key role in

stoking the frenzy over Trump’s alleged involvement with Russian meddling in the

U.S. presidential race[.]”

The Intercept conducted a quantitative study of all 28 episodes of The

Rachel Maddow Show in the six-week period between February 20 and March 21,

Russia-focused segments accounted for 53 percent of these broadcasts. In 16

of the 28 episodes analyzed, Russia comprised either all or a substantial part of the

“A-block,” the show’s headlining and lengthiest segment.

C. Rachael Maddow’s Malicious and False Claim that OAN “Really

Literally is Paid Russian Propaganda”

ref 2 tenn star

One America News Network (OANN) demanded retractions from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Daily Beast, threatening a lawsuit, after both suggested links to the network and Russian propaganda.

Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast wrote an article stating OANN’s Kristian Rouz “appears on segments for One America News Network – ironic given he is working for a Russian outlet fingered in the 2016 election attack.” That same day, Maddow stated on “The Rachel Maddow Show” that OANN “really, literally is Russia propaganda.”

Rouz does write for Sputnik, a Russian government-owned news outlet. He has “never had decision-making authority with respect to the content that is aired on OAN,” one cease-and-desist letter reads.

“His outside work for other media outlets has no relation to — or bearing on — his work for OAN,” according to a cease-and-desist letter.

Poulsen quoted former FBI agent Clint Watts, who suggested OANN employing Rouz means the outlet has merged with “Russian state-sponsored propaganda.”

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” Watts said. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”

Miller Barondess, LLP is handling the case against on behalf of OANN.

“This is vile, sensationalistic reporting,” Miller wrote in a press release. “These defamatory statements must be retracted immediately. One America News Network has no connection to the Russian government or any other government — no connection whatsoever, financial or otherwise.”

“Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information,” Poulsen wrote July 22, in which he referred to OANN as being endorsed by President Donald Trump.

If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.

The article also reads that OANN is “increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda.”

Maddow described OANN as a “boutique, little news outlet that is designed specifically for Trump mega-fans. It’s called One America … News Network.” She referred to The Daily Beast article during her show.

“We literally learned today that that outlet that the president is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin,” Maddow said July 22. “I mean, what? It’s an easy thing to throw out … ‘Hey, that looks like Russian propaganda.’ In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

OANN’s lawyers have given Maddow and The Daily Beast until Aug. 15 to retract its statements, according to the cease-and-desist requests.

Poulsen declined to comment. Maddow and The Daily Beast did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Shelby Talcott is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.

TDB

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-trumps-new-favorite-channel-employs-kremlin-paid-journalist

no lnx

If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.

Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.

OF COURSE

Trump’s New Favorite Network Embraces Russian Propaganda

Kevin Poulsen

Rouz’s on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifa through her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”

Other smears target billionaire financier George Soros, a longtime Kremlin bête noire. In one segment, Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that Soros collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, when the Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another Rouz story accused Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.

Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information. A segment on the Syrian rescue workers known as the White Helmets references “allegations of the White Helmets’ involvement in military activities, executions, and numerous war atrocities,” but doesn’t disclose that those “allegations” were hoaxes that originated with Vladimir Putin and his proxies.

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media.”

— Clint Watts

In another report, Rouz cast Clinton’s criticism of Brexit as an extension of her “grievous insults and fake narratives against Russia”—an assertion that makes sense only in the context of Rouz’s multiple reports claiming Russia was framed for hacking Democrats.

In all of Rouz’s OAN segments reviewed by The Daily Beast, he is introduced as a “One America correspondent,” with no disclosure of his work for Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.

“This completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,” said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”

Rouz didn’t respond to email and telephone inquiries for this story. Reached by email, OAN President Charles Herring invited The Daily Beast to submit written questions about the network’s arrangement with Rouz. But after receiving the questions, Herring cut off contact.

Online records show Rouz graduated from Novosibirsk State University in 2010 and went on to earn a master’s degree in international relations at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. His byline first appears on Sputnik in December 2014.

A few months later, he emigrated to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles in the spring of 2015, where he played guitar for an indie rock band called White Tar.

“Oh shit, it's fucking Kristian! That's my ex-guitarist…”

— Jov Paradice

A former bandmate, whose stage name is Jov Paradice, told The Daily Beast that Rouz was secretive about his day job, except to say that he wrote articles about economics for a Russian company. In August 2016, Rouz worked for the Los Angeles PR firm the Hoyt Organization, according to a since-deleted tweet by the firm announcing his hire. He appears in an October 2016 photo on Hoyt’s Instagram feed, but isn’t readily apparent in subsequent photos. Hoyt didn’t respond to repeated email and telephone inquiries from The Daily Beast.

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Paradice said he and Rouz frequently clashed over their differing world views.

“We kind of had a thing musically, but we were total opposites,” said Paradice. “When Trump was getting elected, he went into full sports coat mode. He had an indie style before—the whole blurred-line-of-sexuality thing—then he was wearing red ties and a suit. I said, ‘I’m not getting on the stage with Trump.’”

In August 2017, Rouz said he was leaving the band to accept a job offer in San Diego, Paradice recalls. It was only recently that Paradice discovered what that job was, when a Facebook friend posted a One America video purporting to document a link between antifa and ISIS terrorists.

“I’m thinking, there’s something familiar here, and then I go, ‘Oh shit, it’s fucking Kristian!’” said Paradice. “That’s my ex-guitarist… His bullshit propaganda is good enough now that they gave him a tiny bit of a platform.”

Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putin’s election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.

[CHANNEL ZERO

The Hell of Working at Trump’s New Favorite Network

Kevin Poulsen]

In July 2017, Sputnik contracted with a struggling Washington, D.C.-area radio station to begin broadcasting Sputnik content 24 hours a day. Until then, the station played bluegrass music.

The move came just months after a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment named Sputnik, and its sister television outlet RT America, as players in Putin’s election-interference campaign. By September, the FBI was investigating Sputnik for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The next month, Twitter announced it would no longer accept ads from Sputnik or RT.

The FARA issue was resolved in November 2017, when Sputnik formally registered with the Justice Department as an agent of a foreign power.

One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.

Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channels—and a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News. Under Herring’s direction, the network embraced Trumpism enthusiastically, starting in 2016.

Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia’s global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers who’d bristled at the change.

Though it’s available in only a handful of cable markets, OAN’s viewership includes some influential figures, including the president of the United States. According to Media Matters, Trump has fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.

Kevin Poulsen

Sr. National Security Correspondent

@kpoulsen

Kevin.Poulsen@thedailybeast.com

almost 1400 results, interesting to compare to cherrypick list in lawsuit?

https://sputniknews.com/search/?query=kristian+rouz

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/extremely-demoralizing-cnn-reportedly-baffles-staffers-after-hiring-an-ex-trump-administration-flack-to-run-politics-coverage/

According to The Daily Beast, CNN staffers are angry and disheartened by the news that Republican strategist Sarah Isgur was hired as political editor for the network’s coverage ahead of the 2020 presidential election:

The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision. While other marquee hires are often announced internally, as of Tuesday afternoon the company has not circulated any guidance to staff about Isgur’s new role, leading employees to wonder how much of a role she will have in day-to-day political reporting.

“It’s extremely demoralizing for everyone here,” one network editorial staffer told The Daily Beast.

“People are generally confused,” another editorial employee said, adding that the decision to hire a partisan operative for an editorial position comes off as “very bizarre.”

Isgur has previously advised several right-wing campaigns and organizations, including a Ted Cruz Senate run and Carly Fiorina’s 2016 presidential campaign. She most recently served as a spokeswoman for the Justice Department under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a job for which the Washington Post reported she pledged her loyalty to the Trump agenda to get.

One key thing missing from her résumé, however, is any experience in journalism.

She has also been a consistently reliable right-wing partisan. Vox reported that on Twitter, she has called President Barack Obama “the new Nixon,” compared abortion to gun violence, spread conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, lied that “92 percent of jobs lost in Obama’s first term belonged to women,” scoffed at the idea that climate change is a national security threat, and attacked the media for pointing out that President Donald Trump pushed Birther conspiracy theories. She has also repeatedly attacked CNN itself, calling it the “Clinton News Network” and attacking them for correctly reporting that an event hosted by a right-wing hate group is “anti-gay” and “anti-abortion.”

CNN is, of course, no stranger to hiring controversial far-right personalities. The network hired Jeffrey Lord, a Trump surrogate who they had to dismiss after he tweeted a Nazi slogan, and Kayleigh McEnany, who has claimed transgender civil rights empower sexual predators.

But the difference is, these people were hired as commentators, to give their own opinions — for better or worse — in overtly political debate segments. It is extremely rare, The Daily Beast noted, for a news network to hire a political operative with no background in journalism as an editor. (CNN disputes the idea that she will steer editorial decisions, telling Vox’s Aaron Rupar that Isgur “is not leading, overseeing, or running political coverage” and will simply be “helping to coordinate coverage across TV and Digital.”)

The dissatisfaction by CNN staffers is a sign that the hire threatens to embarrass the network and undermine its credibility.