America's expanding crackdown on RT and Moscow's covert influence operations
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Since I got the idea for today's episode, my news peg, the current event with which I hope to lure listeners, has refreshed several times. Last month, the FBI raided the homes of Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of American foreign policy, and Dimitri Saenz, the former president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest and an advisor to Donald Trump's first presidential campaign in 2016.

Symes' name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report on Russian efforts to interfere in America's 2016 presidential election. In late August, the New York Times reported that these searches were part of the U.S. Justice Department's broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia's state television networks.

That was a pretty good news hook to talk about how American policing of Russian state propaganda is evolving. Then, in early September, the DOJ really let loose, announcing the ongoing seizure of 32 internet domains used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns, alleging that Russian companies use these domains to impersonate legitimate news entities and unique media brands to spread Russian propaganda covertly.

violating laws against money laundering and trademarks. That same day, the Justice Department indicted two Russia-based employees of RT for conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which you'll hear a lot about today. U.S. officials say Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva implemented a $10 million scheme to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to publish,

and disseminate information with hidden Russian government messaging. The RT employees allegedly used fake personas and shell companies to do this whole thing. One day later, the DOJ kept rolling, charging Dmitry Symes, remember him, and his wife with participating in a scheme to violate U.S. sanctions for the benefit of sanctioned Russian broadcaster Channel One, Pervy Kanal, and to launder funds obtained from that same scheme. Symes, who co-hosts a talk show on Russian state television,

allegedly got more than a million bucks, a personal car and driver, a stipend for an apartment in Moscow, and a team of 10 employees from Channel One, all after the Treasury's Department of Foreign Assets Control slapped sanctions on the Russian TV network.

The Saimzes remain at large and are living what I assume is a fairly comfortable life in Russia now. About a week later, the U.S. State Department issued a special alert to the world, declaring that new information obtained over the last year reveals that Russia today has moved beyond simply a media outlet and has become an entity with cyber capabilities that's also engaged in information operations, covert influence, and military procurement.

Officials designated another three entities and two individuals for their connection to this alleged work, particularly in relation to a supposed plot to influence next month's elections in Moldova. Washington claimed that the Russian government embedded within RT in spring 2023 an entity with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence.

The State Department doesn't provide any details here, but according to its fact sheet, the information produced through this entity's capabilities under the cover of RT flows to Russia's intelligence services, Russia's media outlets, Russian mercenary groups, and other various state and proxy arms of the Russian government. Based on these allegations, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, later announced that it has banned Russia Today and its affiliates from all its platforms.

Now, META has been designated as an extremist organization within Russia for a couple of years now, but Russian propaganda has continued to leverage its products abroad, especially in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. And finally, a day before that big announcement from the State Department,

A jury in Tampa, Florida convicted four American citizens of conspiracy to act as agents of the Russian government. The four people were involved with activism through the African People's Socialist Party in one of its offshoots, and they got in bed with Alexander Ionov.

the founder and president of the anti-globalization movement of Russia. Incidentally, Ionov, who publicly plays the role of lobbyist and self-described human rights advocate, filed the formal complaint against Meduza that landed this news outlet on Russia's foreign agents registry all the way back in 2021. Evidence presented in the Florida criminal case reveals that Ionov's influence efforts in the United States have been directed and supervised by officers in Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB.

And that's where I want to start today's conversation about the evolving U.S. police response to Russian state propaganda. Welcome to the Naked Pravda. Howdy, folks. Welcome back to the show. I'm Kevin Rothrock, your host and the managing editor of Meduza's English Language Edition.

That was an unusually long, cold open. There's a lot of backstory for today's episode, and I wanted to arm you with all the basic facts before we dive in. My guest today is RFARL journalist Mike Ackle, who co-authored a recent article with Mark Krutov and Sergei Dabrynin about a multi-year effort by the FSB to work with groups

of American activists who provided Moscow with information that Russian officials hope to use to sow division in the United States. You've heard that phrase before. The best part of this article is that Mike and his colleagues were the first to report on detailed transcripts between Alexander Ionov and his FSB handlers.

The transcripts, which were entered into the record in the Florida federal case last month, are a treasure trove of silly and thoroughly incriminating back and forth, and a defense lawyer for one of the African People's Socialist Party activists tried unsuccessfully to keep them out of the trial evidence, calling them hearsay. You can find a hyperlink to Mike's article and scans of these chat records in the description of this podcast episode. But with that said, let's get to the interview. ♪

I guess one thing I was wondering was, is this a coordinated campaign? And I'm asking you to speculate, I suppose. But does this look to you like a coordinated campaign ahead of the presidential election? Or is this just there's a lot of ongoing investigations and they're just kind of coinciding, they're culminating together, but this can't necessarily be timed. It's just there's a lot of stuff happening. What's your read?

Well, that's an interesting question because, you know, remember in the run up to the 2016 election, there was like a heck of a lot of stuff that was popping up. All sorts of announcements by the ODNI, the Director for National Intelligence about Russian interference. So, you know, there seems to be a bit of a pattern here over the past decade.

several elections where there's been this, you know, sort of crescendo of public statements, sanctions, indictments, reporting regarding election interference. Now, maybe that's natural because we're in election season. That is we, the United States. And there's lots of concern about this. You know, it's pretty well established fact that

There are these efforts, not only by the Russians, of course, you know, the Iranians have been flagged by the Americans and by others of being particularly aggressive in efforts to tinker with and meddle with and stir the pot for American public opinion. Chinese, too, have been mentioned. Based on like the indictments that have been published,

Is there a pattern in how U.S. law enforcement tends to apparently discover these agents or make these accusations? I know that there often seems to be correspondence that they've somehow acquired, and it's unclear if they're getting it through warrants where they seize iCloud records or they're intercepting them some other way. Are you seeing any patterns in terms of the evidence that surfaces? No, but...

Clearly, there's an effort to like publish the raw materials as much as possible to bolster the, you know, provide raw evidence to bolster the assertions that. Because they don't have to do that or is that. They don't. I mean, but obviously, you know, to just say Russia is interfering. People are skeptical whenever the U.S. government says these kind of things. So show us the proof. Show us the money.

There have been instances where you can see, you know, there's quotes from transcripts or intercepts or phone chat logs that are being put out there to both of the assertions that malign actors are doing what they what the U.S. says they are doing. And would that come out in the trial? Absolutely.

And they're just putting it out in the indictment to get in front of it? Or it's possible that the government doesn't even have to release that ever? Well, so now you're referring to the Ionoff trial, which is interesting because the indictments against Ionoff and the activists in Florida, and then the superseding indictment that named the FSB officers. I mean, that was a process that's been going on for more than,

almost two years now, well before, well in advance of any sort of election cycle. It just happens to coincide. It all culminated in the past two weeks, namely with the convictions of the activists in Florida. And that happens to coincide with all these other activities like the indictments, the sanctions, the State Department announcements, the takedown of the doppelganger sites, and

It all fits together as pieces of the same puzzle.

But definitely the Ionoff story that you're referring to, that was something that was in the works for some time before now. And in terms of the correspondence that was released, it was released in the indictment or it was made public through the trial? When were those documents actually released and exactly how? Well, this is what's so interesting about that correspondence. So what happened is that there were these pretrial motions between the government prosecutors and the defense lawyers for the activists.

leading up to the trial. And as part of any sort of criminal trial, there's the discovery process where the two sides, the prosecution and defense, have to turn over evidence to one another in the interest of transparency. So each side has a chance to rebut or respond in some form during the trial process. And what happened is the government, the Justice Department, turned over these chat logs that they had obtained

messages, both WhatsApp messages and iCloud messages between IONOFF and

his FSB handlers in Moscow. And they don't have to disclose how they got that exactly, right? The defense lawyers sought to keep them out of the trial. They didn't want the chat logs to be introduced in trial. They said, well, this is hearsay evidence and this doesn't have any bearing on, it's not relevant to our client's defense. And the government said, no, of course it's relevant.

It shows a pattern of how the FSB was seeking to influence these activists. So the chat logs were ultimately introduced. They were allowed to be introduced during the trial. And as someone who was monitoring the back and forth, I just happened to notice that these logs had been filed. And I thought, wow, this is totally fascinating. This

This is how the FSB communicates on a regular basis about all sorts of shit, pedestrian daily stuff. And then also, well, let's figure out how we can manipulate these activists so they can, you know, stir the pot and sow discord in the U.S. as we want them to. Documenting that and then contextualizing it, trying to figure out what they were talking about on any given day was what led to the report that we ended up releasing.

And as we all know, the activists were in fact convicted of serving as unregistered foreign agents. The U.S. Justice Department secured their convictions just the other week. You said that you were tracking. I mean, what exactly were you tracking? How did you notice that these records have been shared with the public or shared with the trial and then made public? I'm curious to know. The filings are all in any sort of criminal case or even civil case. I mean, the filings are all made publicly.

in the court docket, sometimes live, you know, over the course of the day, or sometimes they show up at the end of the work day. So it's just a matter of knowing where to look and how often to look. And the Ionov trial, again, had been building for some months now. So it was just a matter of, and basically every morning when I come into work, I check and see the filings.

for this trial and for like three dozen other ones because usually it's all like pretrial motions and it's all legal jargon nonsense but sometimes you get

These little fascinating tidbits of evidence and exhibits that get thrown into the court docus. Boy, you're doing God's work there. That sounds like a real slog. If you set up an alert, you can get the alerts and you know what to look for there. I see. I see. Okay. And the U.S. government will throw these little Easter eggs into the docus sometimes. You're like, wow, holy shit, this is a great freaking piece of intelligence that the government is making public.

Right. So in the correspondence between Iona and his FSB handlers, was anything surprising to you or was it kind of more like, I mean, when I saw it and when I saw your report on it, I,

what surprised me it wasn't so much surprising it was just kind of like wow they're the way these guys talk to each other is is as dumb as you kind of think that might be but you think no i can't be that dumb but then the the way that they talk about it and the way that they'll keep talking about even after they've been alerted to the fact that they're under surveillance essentially well so what surprises most about it yeah the the pedestrian sort of back and forth texting is is kind of

fun, you know, where they talk about, well, let's meet for lunch here at this cafe near Lubyanka, where the FSB headquarters are, or they're complaining about their workload. But what actually surprised us is that it appears that Ionoff and one of the FSB officers, their devices, their mobile devices were being backed up to iCloud, which means that they're on Apple servers, which means that, you know, the

government can go to Apple and say, hey, we're subpoenaing you for the records of this particular user. And, you know, lo and behold, they can pretty easily get that sort of information.

And the same thing for WhatsApp, you know, WhatsApp messages are supposed to be encrypted between users there. But if you don't set up your phone properly, those messages will also be backed up to the cloud and they can be thus accessible to anyone knowing how to look for it. So it's extraordinarily, assuming that's exactly what happened and that's our hunch, our strong hunch what happened. It's extraordinarily bad OPSEC for like,

FSB officers to be doing this kind of stuff.

So that's what surprised us most of all about this. What about these four African People's Socialist Party and I guess one of their offshoots, these activists involved with this group, they were convicted of conspiracy to act as agents of the Russian government. And it appears as though they were sort of initially courted. I don't know exactly how the first contact was made, but their relationship with Iona began because he sort of offered them

a platform for their political views and it was sort of beneficial to them but then ultimately we have them accepting kind of plane tickets and logistics from ionov where they're demonstrating and lobbying for sort of purely russian viewpoints even like you know russia's position on the invasion of ukraine which doesn't seem like a integral part of any african people's socialist movement and so do you understand like how this relationship evolved exactly because it looks like it ended

It developed in a direction that isn't totally coherent to me. Alexander Ionov, for people who have been following, tracking him for years, he's not new on the scene. He's been doing this for more than a decade, I believe. His anti-globalization movement, which was ostensibly this noble-sounding NGO designed to

facilitate, you know, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist thinking and solidarity for small peoples against great big empires. You know, Aionov had ulterior motives, first and foremost, and a very targeted approach to cultivating these activists. And again, there's another example that the activists who went on trial in Florida, they were

Africa power, black power activists. Some were advocating for reparations for African-Americans in the U.S.,

and similar related issues. But Ionov and his FSB handlers were also cultivating activists in California who were advocating for California to secede from the United States. And one of the leaders of the California secessionist movement is believed to be living in Russia right now, having developed a fairly robust relationship with Ionov and then by proxy with the FSB. So

Long story short, I don't know if nobody was doing. And if the goal was Mio to like stir the pot and just like cause trouble and empower these kind of fringe political movements like secede California from the rest of the U.S. or reparations, which of course is not necessarily fringe anymore.

Then, you know, he was very successful in doing that. As far as the activists in Florida were concerned, I mean, I can't really, of course, speak for them. Their defense mainly was focused on the fact that this is protected political speech. There's nothing illegal about saying

We want reparations for African-Americans and that shouldn't be punishable or criminalized under U.S. law, which pretty much everyone agrees with. But as you point out, it's one thing for these groups to be like, yes, reparations for African-Americans, but also taking up the banner of these kind of, you know, wingnut Kremlin conspiracy thinking like on the Ukraine war, like as you point out,

How is that related to Black Power movement in the United States? But even there, they could do that if they wanted. The question is concealing their interactions with the Russian government, right? That's the nature of the crime. Yeah, and not just the interactions, but I mean, they were accepting money for these efforts. They were flying to Moscow on IONOS time, and again, it's not IONOS money. Right, right. This gets to another question I have, is that a lot of this is understood, at least the

the sort of circles I travel in, a lot of it, there's like a lot of like comparisons made to the way that quote unquote foreign agents are treated in Russia and the way they're treated in the United States. And this is like an ongoing comparison that draws a lot of like unfavorable, you know, compare it is itself. It's a very unfavorable comparison. It's a very unfair comparison in many ways. But one question I wanted to ask was in a

In a lot of these cases that have been occurring recently, FARA is mentioned, the Foreign Agents Registration Act is mentioned, but the actual crimes, I mean, there are a few cases of FARA violations in these indictments and so on, but a lot of them seem to do, and for instance, with the four individuals in Tampa, they were convicted of conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government, which is not the same as a FARA violation.

as I understand it. This is similar with Maria Butina. It was like, oh, at first all the headlines were like, she's violated FARA, but then it turns out that she was actually, you know, she confessed to, what is it, like this 951 US federal code or something, which is like, it's not directly related to FARA.

Some quick background here. The FSB arrested Maria Butina in July 2018 while she was living in Washington, D.C., on charges of acting as an agent of the Russian Federation without prior notification to the attorney general. That December, she pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent, and she was sentenced the following April to 18 months in prison. She was ultimately released and deported back to Russia in 2019.

Despite the guilty plea, Butina denies acting as a Russian spy and now serves as a member of Russia's parliament as a deputy from Russia's ruling political party. She's also maintained an active social media presence and hosted content on Russia Today, propagating Kremlin narratives about nearly everything you can imagine.

It's like similarly related to it's unregistered foreign agent activity, but it's not a far violation. And then there's a lot of like money laundering. There's a lot of like there's like trademark infringement, which is what the doppelganger thing was. Stepping back in terms of like the toolkit that American law enforcement is using, what are you seeing them drawing on?

Well, so I'm glad you point out the Section 951 and the difference between that and Farr violations. Section 951 is often referred to as espionage light. It's not a full-on espionage case, but it's, you know, in that gray area, a step down from espionage. And it's, again, related to Farr in terms of the definitions that are contained in the statute.

Conspiracy is, you know, it's a wider net that prosecutors have to cast and looping together all sorts of seemingly unrelated individuals into... Why is it conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian government and not just acting as a Russian agent? Because if you... Because, again, conspiracy to do something is a wider...

It's a wider net. Does it imply that they didn't actually do it or does it just imply that they acted as a group? They acted as a group and further and executed it, but didn't actually be like me saying, like, if I were to charge you with being an agent, a foreign agent versus you participating in a conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. Which one is worse?

Well, I don't know. I mean, like if you're a prosecutor, you better damn well have like really strong evidence to say, hey, Kevin Ross Rock is a foreign agent.

But if you if I say Kevin Rosicka is asking as a part of a conspiracy to work as a foreign agent of the Russian Federation, then you can like loop in all sorts of different threads and to say, well, Kevin should have known or he did know or he received money in furtherance of this crime there. So it's a looser, it's a wider net. And I think.

I mean, I'm no lawyer, I'm no prosecutor, but it seems to me like that's, in some ways, it's an easier charge to bring and it's an easier charge to prosecute. But you need to talk to the Justice Department. It also sounds like it might be more useful in terms of public messaging, too, because, I mean, we can release in indictments and in trial evidence, I guess, a

a wider, more evidence that there's a larger thing happening as opposed to just one individual. Yeah. I mean, I mean the Maria Butina thing is kind of, again, fascinating. It's kind of dropped off many people's radar screens, but the, the implication is she was working in coordination with quite a few people in Russia and elsewhere in furtherance of this crime that she admitted to section 951, the conspiracy crime.

And the reporting that's come out subsequent to her conviction or prison sentence and then being deported has sort of backed that up. That she wasn't just some one person acting on her own, that there were quite a few people also involved in her activity. And to the point of this case within the Florida activists, as we know in the evidence that was introduced in the court docket, there were quite a few other people involved.

besides IONOF, who were involved in watching and coordinating and discussing and communicating and sending money in conspiracy as part of this conspiracy to...

further the interests of the Russian government within the United States. Based on tracking what happens to these individuals after the accusations or the trials are done, does getting exposed like this hurt Ionov's career in Russia? Is the FSB going to be like, this guy stinks at his job, we're not going to work with him anymore? Or is it like, oh, what a good little worker, he's clearly getting things done if the FBI is all over him. And with Butina, she gets back

she's made into a state Duma deputy. She seems to be flourishing as a result of her trials and tribulations. And then there's another, there's other people like Natalia Borlinova, I guess. Right. Who like,

i guess she's she i don't know if she's like languishing in obscurity now or if she's doing okay but i know that she recently had a telegram post where she implied that bhutan was the only one who seems to care about her anymore which to me suggested that maybe she's not doing so well now she's like missing out on all of her foreign academic travels and so on so based on your you know everything that you've you've followed and read do you see these incidents as like a career boost for the individuals involved or is it messier

In April 2023, the FBI issued an arrest warrant for Natalia Berlinova, a Russian foreign policy expert who, until then, was an active participant in group discussions with American graduate students and professors at events designed to promote public diplomacy. The FBI has charged her with conspiracy to defraud and failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Ann says her meetings with American students and academics were part of a years-long effort to influence the opinions of future leaders in the United States on behalf of the Russian government. And she regularly reported back to the FSB about these meetings, sharing biographical information, the interests of the people she was talking to, and their political opinions. Depends. But I will say, I'm glad you raised Berlinova's case because...

This is something that not a lot of people have drawn, connected the dots on, but the two FSB officers who were explicitly named in the superseding indictment of the Ainov case are the same two FSB officers who were publicly outed by the Treasury Department in sanctions that were issued last year in 2023 regarding Berlinova. So,

Were they the ones getting her reports essentially? Essentially, yes. The two FSB officers overseeing Berlinova's activities were two of the same officers who were overseeing Ionov's activities.

And as a side note, I'll say it appears that one of the ways that the Justice Department was able to charge Berlinova was based on evidence that also was acquired, I think, from iCloud backups, which allowed them access to some of the correspondence with the two FSB officers. So to your original question, is it a career boost? You know, I don't know. I think it depends on the person, depends on your handlers.

You think back to the case of the illegals in 2010, the folks who were kicked out of the U.S. after being outed as being deep state agents. And there were several of those folks who did quite well. Remember Anna Chapman? She did well for herself. And then are you still there? Yeah. We're just recollecting all of Anna Chapman's biography. Yeah. She dropped a little bit off the radar screen. Yeah, a little bit. But she did well for a few years.

Some more backstory about Anna Chapman. She's the daughter of a Russian diplomat. In the United States, she posed as a Russian businesswoman. After she was deported back to Russia, she joined the board of directors at a local bank, found a position in the youth wing of the ruling political party, and worked as a model and TV presenter.

Do you think that, this is my own perception, but there's a gap between what a lot of journalists know and are aware about with Russia and then American scholars. Scholars, I think, my impression is a lot of them, they think of like, oh, the Soviet era, and it was sort of their job to be a bridge between American and Russian intelligences and so on. And there was always hostile

government attitudes but you know it's their job to kind of maintain that connection and like the burlanova example is like someone who's doing that i know that in your story a lot of the sources were like well we were aware that you know she was giving pro-government views but you know we kind of we want to know what those were we feel like that's healthy and good

But then you read that, oh, well, she's actually coordinating this with the FSB. And that kind of takes it to another level of like, okay, this isn't just an exchange anymore. We're subjecting ourselves to a secret police operation, essentially, which is not the same as cultural exchange, it seems. And I wonder, do you think, I mean, in your interactions with your sources, who I assume are often American intellectuals and scholars and so on, do you see this as setting back

Will there be less interaction because there's just going to be less trust? Or do you think this is just kind of perpetuation of

the Cold War, we've been here before, will just kind of, there'll be suspicion, but there'll also be a continued eagerness to engage. I don't know. I mean, I think it waxes and wanes with the times. A great example of this, of what you're talking about, is the Valdai events, the Valdai foreign policy discussions that happened for years. I think they actually still happen, but nobody goes to it anymore.

The Valdai Discussion Group is a Moscow-based think tank and discussion forum. It was established in 2004 by the Russian authorities to bring together experts from Russia and foreign countries annually to discuss current issues in international politics. Vladimir Putin's attendance and panel discussion is the forum's highlight event. After the annexation of Crimea, the war in the Donbass, and especially after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the number of Western participants at these meetings has plummeted.

I think you get canceled if you go now. Oh, boy. Yeah. Hold into the FBI. But those events were seen as like prime opportunities for networking and talking to colleagues and in really informal settings. And people would speak very, I think, unguardedly and candidly.

about all sorts of affairs. And, you know, I certainly subscribe to the notion that's a good thing. But, you know, when there's any sort of inkling or realization that perhaps the people that you're speaking to, and I'm specifically speaking about Russian academics, diplomats, intellectuals, that they are, in fact, expected to, required to,

beholden to giving reports back to their handlers. I mean, that definitely would chill my willingness to speak candidly about these things. And, you know, having reported on Russia for as long as I've had, I feel like I've seen some of these, this waxing and waning and the willingness of

academics, intellectuals, diplomats to engage in these kind of informal conversations and workshops and conferences there. But we're in a new era right now, and it would be extraordinarily naive for any academic in this kind of sphere, any Western academic in this sphere, to go into a conference or a workshop with, you know, senior level Russians and not to

be wary about how the conversations are being relayed back to Moscow in some form or another. It's just the reality that we live in these days.

Yeah. Sadly. Right. Well, let me ask you a question about someone who I assume will be given one of the first questions at the next Valdai discussion conference. And that's Dimitri Symes, who obviously is now, you know, in flight or whatever. He's returned to Russia and presumably won't be back in the United States for the rest of his life, I imagine.

He's been charged with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which basically means I think he's violating sanctions on various Russian entities and providing services to Channel One Russia in a scheme to commit money laundering. So again, we're getting FARA violations sounding things, but it's not actually a FARA violation. It's other crimes. And some of the details is that he's serving as a presenter and producer of programming at Channel One, receiving over a million dollars, personal car driver stipend, a

a team of 10 employees from Channel One Russia following its designation by the US authorities. So walk me through this exactly like the crime here, aside from the money laundering, or maybe it's related, but the key crime here is that he's working with Channel One and American citizens are not allowed to do that. Is that the idea? Yeah, essentially. And because Channel One has been sanctioned by the US government, engaging in any sort of transactions involving financial flows, that's

In essence, that's then a violation of sanctions. And there have been several cases, Deripaska, for example, Oleg Deripaska, people have been dinged in one form or another for, you know, trying to do financial transactions on his part in the past. So that's the essence of it. You've captured it. So like you can, for instance, if Channel One called you today and asked you for a comment on something, would

And assuming you didn't just tell them to fuck off, which you might do that. But if they asked you for a comment and you gave them a comment, that would not be illegal. It's not illegal to talk to them. But if they said, we want you to host a show, here's a million dollars, that would be illegal. That's my understanding. Again, I'm not a lawyer. The Symes thing was interesting for two reasons. One is because it's focused specifically on Channel One and the perks or the benefits that Channel One was paying to Symes.

which were substantial. You know, Simon received a million bucks, I guess, from Channel One for hosting this television program called The Great Game. But it was also interesting because his wife was... Did you watch the show at all? Oh, please. Kevin. Yeah. When do I have time to watch this kind of show? I haven't seen it either. I was just curious. Oh, geez. Get a life, man. But, uh...

But the thing with the Symes indictment that was interesting is the fact that not only was he dinged for getting paid basically by Channel One for doing this talk show, but also his wife was dinged because she was buying art and shipping it back to Russia on behalf of this sanctioned oligarch. And again, I get people in your podcast know, probably have a sense of who Dimitri Symes is, and he's been around for so many years in the U.S. He's really...

kind of either notorious or infamous, depending on your feeling, your political feelings towards him.

And he also was an early champion of Maria Butina, just to bring the conversation back around. Meaning he insisted on her innocence, that kind of thing, or before she was even charged. Before, oh, well, before she was charged. Right, right. You know, he ran, he was the head of the Center for the National Interest, which was the center that was originally... Nixon Center. Right, that was originally founded by Richard Nixon. And the magazine that was published, The National Interest. And he published an op-ed, at least one, maybe...

multiple ones by Maria Butina way back, I think, before 2016, before she was a household name.

and helped broker these meetings with some other prominent US political figures in Washington and elsewhere. So he was an early advocate of Bhutan going back well before she was indicted and while she was a household name. So I have no indication that the FBI is investigating him for his ties to Bhutan, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. And then

Do you have any insights into Scott Ritter? Because the FBI obviously raided his home recently. And he says that, I think he told the press that the warrant

to search his home referred to an investigation involved with fara violations so now we're back to foreign agents registration act and then obviously he has um he's worked as a contributing writer at rt he's attended events in russia although i guess he's no longer the u.s authority sees his passport ahead of his attempt to go attend the st petersburg economic forum so he had to like skype in or something

Some more background about Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine and U.N. inspector. In more recent years, he's become a favorite American stand-in for Russian propaganda. Introduced as a military expert, he reliably delivers the Kremlin line on global goings-on, especially in Ukraine, where he's consistently delivered headline quotes about Ukraine's strategic defeat.

and Zelensky's supposedly looming overthrow. The love affair between Ritter and Russian media outlets has continued despite Ritter's multiple arrests for sex offenses, including a 2011 conviction for unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors, and indecent exposure that landed him in prison for two and a half years.

In January this year, Ritter traveled to Chechnya and got an unexpectedly grand reception from the region's dictator governor, Ramzan Kadyrov. Tens of thousands of special forces soldiers lined up to greet the American visitor and witness a big old speech from Kadyrov

where he presented Ritter with a list of Ukrainian POWs and said that he'd free them in exchange for lifting U.S. sanctions on the Kadyrov family. The Chechen strongman later said he was only trolling. I mean, I don't have anything to address beyond what you're reading, what has been reported in the press. I mean, RT and related media outlets have been happy to embrace Ritter because he even advocates for this alternative policy.

view on the Ukraine war specifically. Is he left wing or right wing? What's his thing? Boy, that's a good question. I think he's just wing. I mean, anyone who sort of advocates for support of us for, you got to have peace talks, peace, peace, peace, peace in Ukraine without any sort of nuance or understanding of the conflict and the dynamics that works, then the RT and Sputnik, they're happy to have you on board. And so maybe if he's getting paid for RT, he

which I think he was. I read reports that he was getting RT'd. Maybe that's now prosecutable. Do you know, is RT, is Russia Today sanctioned by the U.S. government, or is it just its affiliates? Because the New York Times in a report earlier this month

What did they write? They wrote that since 2017, the DOJ has required RT to register as a foreign agent, not as a news organization reflecting the government's control over its operations. There is no clear legal precedent that dictates whether journalists working for a news organization would fall under the requirements of FARA. Right. Now they've upped that game with the indictments that were handed down against RT employees who were

allegedly paying this video streaming site in Tennessee that was hosting these kind of- Yeah, that's the other one I forgot to ask you about. It's just too many. I'm losing track. Yeah, so go ahead. Well, so there's that. That was the Justice Department. That was a criminal indictment. And then you have the Secretary of the State Department

calling out RT not only for doing Russia-centric, Russian promotional news reporting, but also accusing them of doing covert operations and cyber operations and laundering of money. I mean, the US government is basically saying, "Okay, RT, you can do your sort of wacky Russia Today stuff as you've always been doing, but you've entered a new realm in terms of alleged criminal activity."

And so we're going to sanction you and we're going to call you out publicly. And if you get paid by RT, like Scott Ritter apparently has, then that also puts him on notice. And I think it's a fair bet that he'll, there's probably an indictment floating around in the Justice Department that will

charge him shortly. And so in terms of the U.S. policing, it seems to be focused on financial transactions. And technically, the way that they're making this not a free speech violation is they're saying, you know, in fact, I think the State Department's, they said, we're not taking action against these entities and individuals for the content of the reporting or even the disinformation they create and spread publicly. We're taking action against them for their covert

influence activities. And so it has to do with like undisclosed things. I guess that's what it looks like. And I think that makes perfect sense because political speech is not criminal in the United States. And again, the foreign agent law does not provide for the government to restrict the content of a foreign agent. And this is kind of one of the funny things that people confuse when saying, well, the Russian foreign agent laws is actually like the U.S. foreign agent law. The U.S. foreign agent law doesn't dictate

you to do anything as a publisher or as a broadcaster. Whereas in Russia, if you are deemed a foreign agent, then you have to slap this crazy disclaimer on your anything, your report, anything you tweet, anything you broadcast. Like Meduza, anything they put out on their damn website or on their Twitter feeds has to say... Well, we don't do that anymore. We're straight up outlaws. Yeah, once they declared us undesirable, we said, eh.

That's enough. We're not going to comply with this stuff anymore. Now I'm going straight to FARA. Has it changed recently? Because my understanding was that I know that legally, in terms of the document, if you go and read it, it doesn't say that it's exclusive to lobbying. You can read it as it being applicable to both lobbying and propaganda. But in decades past, it seems like it's been applied more strictly to lobbying efforts, where you're talking about individuals acting

on behalf of foreign governments or foreign entities who are seeking out audiences with policymakers and things like this. And now we're seeing it applied more to kind of public facing influence operations. Do you think that there's a change in the way far as being policed?

I think so, but I base that only on a layman's reading of how these cases have evolved and some of the public statements that have come from the Justice Department. Right. As we've talked about before, the U.S. officials are definitely leaning on lots of other criminal codes and so on. Right, like the conspiracy code that you talked about earlier or Section 951 that Maria Butina was hit with. What's interesting, and this may not be exactly where you're going with this question, but under U.S. law,

foreign agent regulations writ large, there's a way you can get around some of the foreign agent requirements by registering as a lobbyist under the Lobbying Disclosure Act that will then fly you under the radar screen of the foreign agent registration, but you can still state that you're doing work on behalf of some foreign entity and file your disclosures with Congress under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. And what's the benefit of doing it that way? Well, I guess...

Because it's less of a scarlet letter, maybe? To say you're a lobbyist versus a foreign agent? Yeah. There's lots of lobbyists. People call themselves lobbyists, but few people call themselves foreign agents. There are shit tons of lobbyists. But if you look in the lobbying disclosure filings in Congress, which are another place that I highly recommend spending a lot of time on, you can see people, law firms, individuals who are clearly operating...

on behalf of foreign entities, but have not chosen not to register under the Foreign Agent Act. So those two laws kind of dovetail for anyone who's trying to pay attention to any sort of foreign influence operations within the United States. I see. Okay. Good to know.

Thanks for tuning in, folks. This has been The Naked Pravda, a podcast from Meduza in English. Remember that undesirable status back in Russia means our entire news outlet now relies on readers and listeners around the world to support our work. Please visit our website for information about how to become a contributor with one-time or recurring pledges. Thanks again. Until next week. The Naked Pravda