Aw crap they tricked us with money again
Duped! Completely fooled! Hoodwinked! Who could have seen that coming??
thanks for the money…
Bamboozled! Foisted! Smeckledorfed!
Swindled! Fooled! Cumbubblefucked!
Duped? How? Be getting paid?
By getting paid
More like bribed out of their minds. They absolutely KNEW that what they were doing wasn’t worth a fraction of the money was handed to them.
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The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
TN based. So again, “duped”.
My job dupes me into coming in every night by uploading some wacky numbers to my bank account every two weeks. I fall for it every time.
The whacky numbers in your bank account are quite convenient to have tbf
Oopsie I was just so confused by this giant bag of cash!
Be nice to me, I’M the victim here!
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I’m sure at least some of them truly believed they were worth more than shit
How does one dupe the willing?
Maybe they mean dupe as in duplicate, as in doubling the value of their bank account.
Bags of money!
Apparently they were duped into thinking the money came from pro-Russian US conservatives or something like that instead of directly from the source.
I disagree that they were duped in any way since the pro Russian messaging was still pro Russian messaging and the source of the money is not important.
The coordinated messaging all emphasizing how this was accidental and these longtime trolls didn’t know (or bother to ask) where the money coming from is… something.
Isn’t that just trickling down from the DOJ though? The article says:
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
True, but these people have been completely aligned with Kremlin talking points for years, and I wish the article and others would take the time to point that out. I’m sure it can be phrased in an ambiguous enough way that the reader can draw conclusions without it being libelous.
The AP is a straight news organization, I’m sure there are plenty of left wing articles about the situation that mention that though.
Doesn’t MBFC already rate AP as “left”? Any factual reporting outlet is going to be called “left” because facts are seen as “left” in today’s Overton window.
I think it’s dishonest to pretend these Russian operatives had any plausible deniability. There is absolutely nothing plausible about their denial. Just because they weren’t charged with knowingly accepting Russian money doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely obvious that they knew where the money was coming from.
MBFC is full of shit when describing bias - they call firmly right liberal capitalists “the left”. I don’t think they even have a word to describe actual socialists.
They’re decent about judging the reliability of factual reporting though.
Your comment is 100% factual. That makes you a leftist!
Okay, then the DOJ grasping at any flimsy excuse to avoid indicting the traitorous right-wing influencers themselves is… something.
That better?
Yes 👍🏾
Nazis are always treated with kid gloves by the US “justice” system. Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
I doubt this was the case during (and for at least a time after) WWII. But maybe a history buff can correct me. I haven’t looked too deeply into how the justice system handled Nazis that far back.
The US loved to hire Nazi scientists after the war.
Like Trump?
And many others.
A lot of today’s problems, like the rise of the KKK, stochastic terrorism, and infiltration of law enforcement by neo-nazis, can be traced back to an insufficient number of Confederates being hanged after the war.
“Duped” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that Russia was funding me to spout these talking points!”
“Your gratuities, sir”
“Oh, thank you very much.”
So their excuse is: “we are too dumb to go to prison”
Guilty by reason of Gullible? I’m going to use this, should they ever find myself in court.
No, it’s worse than that. That’s the DOJ’s excuse for refusing to indict the traitorous influencers themselves and only going after their Russian handlers.
There needs to be a law against what they did before they could be indicted for anything. Afaik there is no law against being a foreign propagandist.
Even the two handlers themselves would have been fully legal if they had simply registered as foreign agents.
Our first amendment protects these things, for better or for worse. It protects the right to lobby the government (petition for redress in the official language), with no bar to people doing it on behalf of foreign governments, which is why all we do is make them register under FARA for transparency. We’ve lived under this legal system through the whole Cold War.
Speech is similarly protected, even if it is at the behest of foreign governments.
Our first amendment protects lies and propaganda just the same as everything else, which is why any of us can still go look at RT right now if we wanted. If we can’t even ban RT with all the sanctions we have on Russia right now, how the hell are we supposed to go after these American citizens?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act
They still need to register under FARA though. Also you can’t claim ignorance if you’re actively trying to hide evidence like saying it was for phones instead of salary:
"Those shell companies initially received their funding from RT, and the subsequent payouts to Tenet were shielded not as salary payments but for electronic merchandise such as “BUYING GOODS-INV.013-IPHONE 15 PRO MAX 512GB.”
I’m sure the DOJ could make a crime stick if they really wanted to. But, do they really want to?
Merrick Garland has been the GQPs best friend the last 4 years. Hopefully Harris wins. Hopefully she’ll replace his stodgy ass with someone who cares about applying the law to everyone.
Yeah, maybe something obscure I guess. They’re not exactly black or anything though.
“Duped”
Pool, a journalist-turned-YouTuber who first gained public attention for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests, hosted Trump on his podcast earlier this year.
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
So these two were formally “journalists”, and should know at least something about confirming sources and information before publishing, or in this case I guess making a video/podcast, about the topic given them by this company that wanted to just give them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And maybe look into why a company would pay you that kind of money out of nowhere if they were supplying all the talking points, and they just want you to say them into a camera? Maybe?
I think anyone with any background in media should see right through something like this, and has no leg to stand on when crying “we had no idea!”. They saw a check and all morals/questions went out the window.
If what you say is true, they are guilty of crimes and should be prosecuted. I think the DOJ is unlikely to do this. What legitimate reason would the DOJ have to not prosecute these people?
No. My god, no. What sort of nonsense is that?
You’re taking the position of a catastrophic extreme in response to someone saying they should have been more circumspect about where their money came from.
They should have been more circumspect, though. There’s leagues between acknowledging that and saying that they should be prosecuted by the DOJ.
How is that extreme?
Prosecution isn’t execution, it is trying them for a crime that they may have committed. If they’re found guilty, even punishment could include things like seizing the money paid to them for those videos and putting watermark warnings on those videos explaining who funded them or taking them down entirely, not exclusively jail time.
It’s not extreme to seek their prosecution, it’s an extreme leap to jump from a post about how they should’ve known better (they really should have!) to “They should be prosecuted by the DOJ”.
I’m not sure they need to be prosecuted to have these funds seized, though. The government doesn’t even need to ask them for it I don’t think, depending on how the case proceeds. If the money is part of the case it is probably part of the verdict.
That still seems reasonable to me, though. If there’s evidence that they knew what they were doing, put it to a trial to determine culpability. If they’re not obviously in a position to have known better, I can see not prosecuting them, but prosecution is the normal next step when someone seemingly knowingly commits a crime. If it turns out that they really all got scammed, they’ll be found innocent.
I’m also not sure how it will proceed, but I think it’s much more fucked up if a non-party to a criminal case has assets seized. Given that there are currently sanctions against Russia, I could see it being seized separately by the DOJ and/or IRS, but I’d honestly much prefer that it go through a trial instead of just having the DOJ decide. At least then they can have a jury if they want and they can defend themselves. Civil forfeiture is fucked up
I see, that’s a fair take 👍🏾
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Tim Fool
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
This is interesting. I never liked the guy. Could never put my finger on exactly why, but he always seemed fishy to me.
People found over 40 plagiarized articles.
Once the pop culture listicles grift gave up, seems like he fired up the conservative pro Russian one.
“Duped” doing more lifting than a pallet jack here.
MR covering it live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_HWnfMozwo
Total media blitz today on this . Every outlet pushing the same shite.
…good? About time these morons get called out publicly
It should have happened like 8 years ago when people realized the Kremlin was actively involved in US presidential elections.
Third straight election, you say? I wonder if there is any other factor shared by the last three elections? Like maybe one of the candidates has been the same person?
