Canadians Lauren Chen and Lauren Southern are among the social media influencers alleged to have been paid by Russian agents to spread pro-Trump propaganda to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
September 6, 2024 - "The U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two Russian nationals on Wednesday, accusing them of disseminating pro-Kremlin propaganda through a 'pro-Trump supergroup'.... Details within the charges referred to Tenet Media, which was founded in 2023 by a Canadian influencer known as Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donavan. Last year they hired Chen’s long-time friend and occasional collaborator Lauren Southern, another Canadian influencer with a large social media following, the CBC says.
"Since the indictment was revealed, several Tenet Media collaborators have publicly stated they were not aware how the company was funded.... Southern and Chen haven’t spoken publicly since the indictment was announced. Neither has posted anything since the Justice Department’s accusations were made public.
"Criminal charges have not been brought against Chen, Donavan or Southern and they are not named in the indictment. But the allegations have damaged their reputations. Chen has been fired from another website, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. Her YouTube channel, which had more than 572,000 subscribers, was terminated on Thursday. Her bio page on the website for Turning Points USA, a pro-Trump campus activist group, has been deleted....
"Born in Quebec and raised in Hong Kong, Chen gained prominence as a YouTuber using the name “Roaming Millennial”. She was a strong supporter of Trump in the 2016 election.... Chen appears to be referred to as Founder-1 in the indictment and to have begun working in the spring of 2021 for the parent company of RT — a Russian state-run news outlet. RT was forced to stop operating in Canada and the U.S. as part of government sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
"U.S. officials say in the indictment that while being paid by RT operatives, Founder-1 began recruiting conservative personalities with lucrative offers in 2023 for a new media outlet. Details in the indictment suggest Chen was allegedly billing RT partially through Roaming Millennial Inc., which was a registered company in the Montreal area, where her mother lived. Tenet Media was eventually registered in Tennessee as a subsidiary of Chen’s Canadian company....
"Southern grew up in British Columbia and became a right-wing luminary, known for videos featuring her confronting progressive activists....
[Southern was a candidate for the Libertarian Party of Canada in the 2015 federal election. Her candidacy was suspended by then-leader Tim Moen that July after multiple complaints about some of her videos, but she was reinstated a week later after meeting and talking with Moen. - gd]
"Southern has also produced several videos for Tenet Media focusing on Canadian issues. One was titled 'Canada Is Becoming A COMMUNIST HELLHOLE'. It compares Canada to the U.S.S.R.. Another, called 'Mean Tweets = Life in PRISON in Canada?!' criticizes the proposed Online Harms Act."
Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canadian-influencers-accused-of-russian-propaganda
Canadian influencers tied to alleged Russian interference campaign | CTV News | September 7, 2024:
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