I’ll admit it: If a wealthy benefactor offered to pay me millions of dollars a year to write this blog, I’d be tempted.

As you may know, it’s almost impossible to earn a living in media anymore. Even successful writers and artists have to hustle, and almost none get rich unless they were rich to begin with. Prestigious media outlets have gone bankrupt, and others are resorting to AI-generated filler.

So yes, the temptation is understandable. A rich person who’s willing to fund your journalism and punditry startup is priceless in these turbulent times.

However, the very unfriendliness of the climate ought to spark at least a little skepticism. Specifically, if you find an investor who wants to fund you handsomely, when most outlets are struggling for survival, you should wonder why they’re being so generous and what they hope to get in return. And that’s especially, especially true when this backer doesn’t want their identity known.

That’s a lesson some American right-wingers learned too late.

According to a newly unsealed indictment by the Justice Department, Russia’s state-owned media outlet, Russia Today or RT, was kicked out of the U.S. after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. In response, RT hatched a covert plan to influence American public opinion, laundering money through shell companies to evade sanctions, and funding a Western media outlet to push Kremlin-friendly content.

(Full disclosure: In 2013, I was on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, a progressive TV show which at the time aired on RT.)

The indictment doesn’t name this outlet, but it’s widely reported to be Tenet Media, a conservative agitprop site founded in 2022 by Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. Tenet employed right-wing influencers like Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Lauren Southern. It’s hosted “high-profile conservative guests, including Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake.”

To be the supposed wealthy backer, the RT employees named in the indictment invented a persona named “Eduard Grigoriann”, supposedly a Belgian banker with a generic resume and no Web presence. However, notwithstanding the clumsy attempts at deception, Tenet Media’s founders seem to have been well aware who they were really working for. According to the indictment, they referred to their funders as “the Russians”, and Googled “time in Moscow” while trying to decide when to send a message in order to get a quick response.

Russia paid $9.7 million to Tenet Media, which, according to the indictment, is almost 90% of all the money it took in. In exchange, they got a stable of American right-wingers to parrot Kremlin propaganda on command.

Commentators like Tim Pool denounced Ukraine as the enemy and raged against American military aid. When Tucker Carlson went on a pro-Putin propaganda tour of Russia, RT urged Tenet Media to promote it. One of the producers resisted – “it just feels like overt shilling” – but gave in after pressure from Tenet’s founders. After the deadly Crocus City terrorist attack in March 2024, RT urged Tenet to ignore ISIS’ claim of responsibility and blame the bloodshed on Ukraine and the U.S.

When the indictment was unsealed, Tenet Media immediately shut down. YouTube also deleted their channels. Pool and other affiliates of Tenet claimed that they were innocent dupes and that they’re the real victims. (None of them, so far, have announced any plans to give away the Russian blood money in their bank accounts.)

The notable thing about this indictment is that none of these right-wingers seemed especially hard to buy. None of them questioned why they were being asked to push pro-Putin content. None of them proved too principled to go along with the scheme. It raises the question: When it comes to the American right’s friendliness to Russia, how much is organic – born of Donald Trump’s love for right-wing dictators because he yearns to be one of them – and how much is astroturf – purchased by Russian rubles and amplified by conservative pundits who’ll say anything they’re told to say for money?

If anyone on the right has a conscience, the exposure of this plot should be an occasion for remorse and soul-searching. Whether knowingly or not, they were doing the bidding of a brutal foreign dictator. They were spreading propaganda to blind and confuse Americans, to turn us against each other and weaken our collective will to fight tyranny. They’re modern-day Moscow Roses. Just call them Putin’s rose garden.

However, I doubt they’ll be unduly bothered. Trump’s M.O. is to always deny, never admit fault, and double down whenever you’re caught, and that attitude has been adopted by his fans and followers. They’ve learned that the only sin in modern-day conservatism is to apologize. As long as you deny everything and keep yelling that the accusations against you are concocted by the deep state and the liberal media, there are legions of Trumpist true believers who’ll lap it up. This means that Putin’s cronies are sure to try again, and they’re likely to find many more receptive targets.