Influencer proven in court to be Funded by the Kremlin and Russia has been Added to White House Press Pool
Podcaster Tim Pool was one of six conservative influencers featured by Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company that was secretly funded by Russian state media employees, according to a criminal indictment filed in September.
The
indictment charged two Russian media executives with allegedly funneling $10 million to Tenet, whose personalities were paid to “amplify domestic divisions in the United States” by parroting Kremlin talking points on immigration, inflation and foreign policy, according to the Department of Justice.
Pool earned $100,000 per episode for a weekly show he hosted, the
Washington Post reported, and made major real estate purchases in West Virginia the same month Tenet launched.
Although the indictment only referred to “Company 1,” media outlets were able to identify Tenet and the individual influencers based on the detailed allegations.
The company’s founders allegedly knew the company was backed by Russian money, but Pool and the other influencers—who included Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin—were “unwitting” figures, according to officials. Tenet shut down soon after the indictment was released.
“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool said in a
since-deleted post on X, as reported by
CNN. “The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company.”
And yet Tenet licensed Pool’s podcast The Culture War and shared the episodes widely, meaning Pool’s work organically aligned with Russian disinformation campaigns. He has claimed the
Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and interviewed the masterminds of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol on his podcast