What you need to know about 6 company influencers

Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen and Lauren Southern are Tenet Media influencers. After Wednesday’s indictments, most of them say they are victims.

One is a staunch Trump supporter who interviewed the former president on his podcast, another’s career is marred by repeated scandals including a BuzzFeed plagiarism scandal, and another is a Canadian alt-right commentator who was banned by YouTube.

They are among six conservative figures at the center of a scandal accused of being mouthpieces for Russian propagandists trying to spread disinformation in the U.S.

In a Justice Department indictment unsealed Wednesday, Russian state media company RT was accused of financing the campaign to the tune of $10 million through an unnamed company that closely resembles Tennessee-based Tenet Media.

Specifically, RT is accused of sowing political confusion and division in the U.S. and spreading Russian disinformation via American social media influencers on TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube. More than 2,000 videos posted by Tenet in the past 10 months have been viewed more than 16 million times on YouTube alone, according to the indictment.

Tenet Media produced content with six major far-right commentators serving as creators, hosts, influencers, and disseminators, five Americans and one Canadian. As of Thursday, most had issued statements denying any knowledge of the alleged conspiracy.

Here’s what you need to know about Tenet Media’s six core players: Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen and Lauren Southern.

Tim’s Pool

Tim Pool is a right-wing commentator and podcast host who got his start live-streaming the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests. He later reported for established digital outlets Vice Media and Fusion TV before eventually going solo with a YouTube channel and podcasts.

Now with more than 1.3 million YouTube followers, Pool is an outspoken Trump supporter who has hosted the former president on his podcast, as well as controversial guests like Kanye West. In 2020, a report by the Election Integrity Partnership called Pool a “superspreader” of fake news about voter fraud before and after the 2020 election.

The description of the pool matches the description of “Commentator-2” in the Justice Department indictment, which accuses him of working for a fictitious “private investor” and agreeing to host and share weekly videos with Tenet for $100,000 per video.

On Wednesday, Pool released a response to the indictment, stating that “if these allegations are true, I, as well as other celebrities and commentators, have been defrauded and will be victims.

“I can’t speak for anyone else in the company about what they do or what is required of them.”

He added that he had “never produced any content for Tenet Media” and that “no one but me has ever had full editorial control over the show.” He ended the post with the words “Putin is a scoundrel” and slammed “journalists who want to get ahead of the events, create their own narrative, or lie about what is currently happening.”

Benny Johnson

Benny Johnson is an ardent Trump supporter, conservative YouTube host, and former Buzzfeed reporter who was fired from the network in 2014 for plagiarism.

Johnson is also a former contributor to right-wing websites such as Breitbart, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller and Newsmax TV, and his media career has been marked by scandal.

After joining the Independent Journal Review in 2015, Johnson was again accused of plagiarism, promoting conspiracy theories and writing stories based on false sources. He was fired from the Journal Review in 2017 and later focused on his YouTube channel, which has 2.4 million subscribers.

On Wednesday, the same day the indictment was unsealed, a recording of an interview with Johnson was posted on the Tenent Media YouTube channel.

Johnson issued a statement on the indictment the same day, saying he was “troubled by the allegations” and that “I and other influencers were victims of this alleged conspiracy.”

He also described his involvement with the “media startup” as an independent contractor situation that his lawyers negotiated through a “standard independent contractor agreement that was later terminated.” He threatened legal action against anyone who “states or suggests” that he or other commenters were anything other than victims.

Dave Rubin

Dave Rubin is a conservative commentator and YouTuber who identifies as a libertarian and has been criticized for promoting “extremist” sources. Formerly identifying as a “liberal,” Rubin began his career by trying out comedy before launching his YouTube channel The Rubin Report in 2012. He currently has 2.5 million subscribers.

He has hosted various versions of “The Rubin Report” on networks including “The Young Turks,” RYOT, and Larry King’s Ora TV. He is now available on BlazeTV and YouTube.

Rubin endorsed Trump and Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary.

Rubin fits the description of “Commentator-1” in the indictment, who produced “four weekly videos that he was to host and that were to be broadcast live on Tenet Media in exchange for $400,000 per month and a $100,000 signing bonus.”

IN statement of indictmentRubin says the allegations “make it clear that I and other commentators have been victims of this behavior.”

“I had absolutely no knowledge of any of this fraudulent activity. Period. ‘People of the Internet’ is a stupid viral video show that ended four months ago. The DOJ has never contacted me about it, and I have no intention of commenting further,” he said.

Lauren South

Lauren Southern, the only woman in Tenet, is a Canadian alt-right commentator, YouTuber, and MAGA supporter.

Her content has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “anti-feminist, xenophobic, Islamophobic diatribes” that “tread the edge of overt white nationalism,” although she denies being the latter. In 2017, she promoted a Great Racial Replacement conspiracy theory on her YouTube channel, which drew criticism, and her 2018 documentary Farmlands was described as promoting a white genocide conspiracy theory. She has also publicly supported figures such as American neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer.

In 2015, she ran as a Libertarian Party candidate in the Canadian federal election and finished last with 535 votes, or 0.9% of the total votes.

Southern worked for Rebel Media, a Canadian far-right website, until she went independent in 2017. Her YouTube channel has 712,000 subscribers. She has been banned from Patreon and GoFundMe, denied entry to the UK, banned from speaking in New Zealand and demonetized on YouTube.

In 2018, she visited Russian far-right political philosopher Alexander Dugin in Moscow, releasing a taped interview with him titled “From Russia With Love.” She later came to his defense, saying it was “incorrect to call him a fascist.”

The only woman in the group, she was identified in indictment documents as “Commentator-4,” who was briefly mentioned as having provided Tenet editors with raw and edited video footage.

As of 5 p.m. ET Thursday, Southern had not commented on the indictment.

Taylor Hansen

Taylor Hansen is a self-proclaimed field reporter and host for Tenent Media. His reporting has included reports of child abuse at drag shows, claims of “anti-white racism” at a university, and several stories defending the January 6 insurrectionists and supporting Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot during the storming of the capitol.

His Tenet biography states that Tayler’s work “has been shared multiple times by the 45th President of the United States.”

His statement of indictment portrayed it as a “massive smear campaign against an uncensored, uncompromising, American-first media company” that was the result of “malicious government persecution” and part of a “coordinated” attack by leftists.

“These allegations come as a complete shock to me and the other hosts at TENET Media. I want to be as clear as possible, I was never instructed to report on any topic and had complete freedom and control over my reporting at all times,” he said. “I would never agree to any arrangement where I was not solely responsible for the stories I covered and the content I created.” In a follow-up post, Hansen ridiculed the investigation and indictment, writing, “Live News/Live Coverage of Protests = RUSSIAN ELECTION DISINFORMATION EFFORTS!!!” and included a screenshot of him reporting on the news.

Matt Christiansen

Matt Christiansen is a right-wing podcaster and YouTuber whose videos are “shared exclusively on TENET Media’s YouTube, Rumble, and Facebook channels.” He also hosts a Tenet podcast called the “Matt Christiansen Hour” and an independent “Matt & Blonde Show” with Rebecca Hargraves.

Christiansen’s independent channel has about 235,000 subscribers. He frequently posts videos promoting Trump and theories about other candidates, such as calling Kamala Harris a “communist,” accusing the Democratic Party of “abortion propaganda” and, most recently, sharing an anti-immigration video based on now largely debunked claims about a Venezuelan gang “taking over apartments in Colorado.”

“No one has ever dictated to me what to say or not to say, and I would never agree to anything else” he said in a post on Wednesday“My videos and streams for Tenet are exactly the same as my videos and streams on my personal channels. Every word comes from me and me alone.”

In the live broadcast, Christiansen identified himself as “Commentator-6,” who was only briefly mentioned in the indictment for the video announcement of his work with Tenet. In the broadcast, he insisted there was no evidence of Russian involvement in the media company and said, “I was not deceived, consciously or unconsciously. Everyone was honest with me, as far as I know.”