What we know about the two Canadian influencers accused of Russian propaganda

DOJ documents refer to Tenet Media, which was founded in 2023 by a Canadian influencer known as Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donavan

Published Sep 06, 2024  •  4 minute read

FILE PHOTO: Lauren Chen speaks onstage during the 2019 Politicon at Music City Center on October 26, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo by Jason Kempin /Getty Images for Politicon

Two of Canada’s most outspoken influencers have gone quiet after U.S. officials accused them of being collaborators in a covert Russian propaganda campaign.

The U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against two Russian nationals on Wednesday, accusing them of disseminating pro-Kremlin propaganda through a “pro-Trump supergroup,” the Washington Post is reporting. During the few months that it operated, the outlet produced a steady stream of pro-Donald Trump content.

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Details within the charges referred to Tenet Media, which was founded in 2023 by a Canadian influencer known as Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donavan.

Last year they hired Chen’s long-time friend and occasional collaborator Lauren Southern, another Canadian influencer with a large social media following, the CBC says.

Since the indictment was revealed, several Tenet Media collaborators have publicly stated they were not aware how the company was funded. “These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme,” Dave Rubin, a right-wing pundit wrote on X. He has 2.45 million YouTube subscribers.

Southern and Chen haven’t spoken publicly since the indictment was announced. Neither has posted anything since the Justice Department’s accusations were made public.

Criminal charges have not been brought against Chen, Donavan or Southern and they are not named in the indictment. But the allegations have damaged their reputations.

Chen has been fired from another website, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. Her YouTube channel, which had more than 572,000 subscribers, was terminated on Thursday. Her bio page on the website for Turning Points USA, a pro-Trump campus activist group, has been deleted.

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WIRED reports that YouTube removed Tenet Media’s channel on Thursday saying it “violated our community guidelines.”

What we know about Lauren Chen from Quebec

Born in Quebec and raised in Hong Kong, Chen gained prominence as a YouTuber using the name “Roaming Millennial”. She was a strong supporter of Trump in the 2016 election.

As her subscriber base grew, Chen began making appearances on media outlets such as Fox News and the Daily Wire.

Chen appears to be referred to as Founder-1 in the indictment and to have begun working in the spring of 2021 for the parent company of RT — a Russian state-run news outlet. RT was forced to stop operating in Canada and the U.S. as part of government sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. officials say in the indictment that while being paid by RT operatives, Founder-1 began recruiting conservative personalities with lucrative offers in 2023 for a new media outlet.

Details in the indictment suggest Chen was allegedly billing RT partially through Roaming Millennial Inc., which was a registered company in the Montreal area, where her mother lived.

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Tenet Media was eventually registered in Tennessee as a subsidiary of Chen’s Canadian company.

When Tenet Media launched in November, the RT operatives are suspected of having directed the two founders about how certain stories should be covered and what content to disseminate on social media.

For example, the operatives instructed Chen to produce content that blamed the U.S. and Ukraine for the March 2024 terror attack in Moscow — for which ISIS claimed responsibility.

What we know about Laura Southern from British Columbia

Southern grew up in British Columbia and became a right-wing luminary, known for videos featuring her confronting progressive activists.

She also made connections with movements in Europe, South Africa and Australia, helping circulate extremist ideas, says the CBC. Southern was an early proponent of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which advocates the idea that white-majority populations are being replaced by migrants.

Southern has also produced several videos for Tenet Media focusing on Canadian issues.

One was titled “Canada Is Becoming A COMMUNIST HELLHOLE”. It compares Canada to the U.S.S.R.. Another, called “Mean Tweets = Life in PRISON in Canada?!” criticizes the proposed Online Harms Act.

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Canadians are also targets

Intelligence experts say the indictment details reflect the scope of Russian efforts to influence the American election.

“We have not seen an adversary attempt to influence an American election to this degree ever before,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, told the CBC.

He warned that Canadians are not immune to the influence of disinformation campaigns.

“The Russians’ overarching objective is to increase the level of discontent in our institutions — and institutions in all of the Western countries,” he said.

Richard Fadden, former director of CSIS, told the CBC that Russians “care deeply about shaping how you think, how you vote and sowing chaos and discord.”

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