President Donald Trump's administration recently intervened to help a disgraced far-right YouTube commentator get back into the United States — even though her channel was exposed as a Russian media front.
The Bulwark's Will Sommer reported Monday that Canadian citizen Lauren Chen of Tenet Media reportedly reentered the U.S. over the Christmas holiday, even though her work visa was suspended in 2024 amid an FBI investigation into her YouTube channel. Tenet Media's funders had been linked to the Russia-funded RT network, and were accused of funneling approximately $10 million to Chen's company, which also housed prominent pro-Trump pundits like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin.
Sommer noticed a post to Chen's Instagram account on Christmas Day, where she celebrated that she was able to return to Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, Liam Donovan after securing a visa from Trump's State Department. Chen specifically thanked "Joe Rittenhouse at the State Department," along with "the new leadership at the FBI, and the administration for their help making this possible, and for everything they do to keep America safe."
Rittenhouse responded to Chen's post with one of his own, writing on X that he was "happy to help correct the wrongs of the past administration." Sommer reported that Rittenhouse is apparently a fan of far-right YouTubers, and in August posted a photo of his feet on his desk while watching a video by British YouTuber Sargon of Akkad (whose real name is Carl Benjamin).
In September of 2024, the FBI charged RT employees Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva sought to "create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging."
"The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing," he added.
Despite the Tenet Media scandal, its personalities have continued to see their platforms flourish. Dave Rubin's YouTube channel has 3.1 million subscribers, Tim Pool has more than 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and Benny Johnson's channel on Rumble (a platform similar to YouTube popular among the far right) has more than 481,000 followers. Pool maintained at the time that he was tricked into providing content for a media startup and that Russian Vladimir Putin was "a scumbag."
Click here to read Sommer's full report in The Bulwark.