Originally published at: Russia-praising Tim Pool denies knowledge of Russian money to podcast platform - Boing Boing
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I 100% believe that Tim Pool didn’t know he was being fed propaganda from Russia. And so does the Justice Department. They haven’t implicated or charged any of the content creators who were getting paid by Tenet. I’m certain they would charge them if they had evidence that they knew what was going on.
Now, did some of them maybe just keep themselves willfully ignorant? Probably. Not Tim Pool, though. He’s legitimately ignorant.
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Time to bring in the forensic specialists!
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He was quite a specific sort of accountant.
I’m just pointing that out, not suggesting he shouldn’t be used or anything.
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There’s a sequel coming out as well. He’s the Judge Dredd of bookkeeping.
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I once saw him referred to as Dim Tool and it’s stuck with me.
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I’d say there is a spectrum of possibility, and that until there is more information it’s premature to assume a particular arrangement. I hope more information comes out; Pool’s deletion of the tweet denying things seems like information on its own to be honest.
Sure, it’s possible that the Russians simply found a bunch of pro-Russian apologist influencers and started funneling money to them in order to increase their reach and ensure they keep on keeping on, but it indeed never impacted the actual content of the channels — which is essentially what Pool is claiming.
On the other end of the spectrum, they could have explicitly told their channels where their funding was coming from, and given them marching orders about how to cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and possibly other topics, and that the US government just doesn’t have enough evidence for that yet to bring charges.
And in the middle, there are several approaches where the funding could still have influenced these channels without the channels being explicitly told.
The Tenet Media folks could have relayed specific talking points from the Russian backers to their channels, without telling the channels where those talking points were coming from.
Or, even softer, Tenet Media folks could have told channels something along the lines of “we really like this episode (in which they spout Russia-friendly talking points), can you do more like that?” which would still allow the channels to say, at least semi-truthfully, “we were never told what to say.”
EDIT: According to The Guardian, we can cross off the two most benign options above, as they indeed used Tenet to relay specific talking points to at least one channel:
In one instance, the indictment said, one of the RT employees asked the company to produce a video that would blame Ukraine and the United States for a mass shooting at a Moscow music venue, the justice department said, even though Islamic State had claimed responsibility. A company founder responded that one of the commentators is “happy to cover it”, according to the indictment.
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Like I said before, claiming to be ignorant is his best and most plausible defence.
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Not being a fucking moron, I double checked his statement. He really did actually say, out loud, that the Nord Stream pipeline (blown up on September 26, 2022) was the trigger for the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022.
He can’t possibly be that stupid, but he clearly thinks his listeners are dumb enough to just nod along and agree.
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Tim Pool is a total fucking moron. A literal useful idiot. Sure, maybe he didn’t know where the money was coming from, but if there was any direction of his talking points, and just a tiny bit of critical analysis about what those points were and who they were helping, should have clued most people in.
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Finding out that Tenet Media had an address in Franklin is not at all surprising. A garbage town in a garbage state.
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“I didn’t know I was being paid by Russia, an enemy of the USA! I was saying things I would have said already, and Russia, an enemy of the USA, just liked it enough that they paid me!”
Not quite the exculpatory sentiment you think it is, Tim…
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I don’t; no matter how stupid that fucker is. (And he IS just fucking stupid.) Still at some point, someone close to him had to have questioned his income stream.
On some level, I believe they all knew and they just didn’t care.
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Yep. I think these types are stupid enough to think “we’re on the same side” and in the upper echelons of the media people like Carlson make it appear that Russia will take care of their “allies” in the US.
But the DOJ is being really nice about it so I’m hoping this means the bigger fish are in the net. 
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Valid, but there’s a case to be made that no, he actually is that stupid. A normal person, before making that claim, would verify when the invasion of Ukraine started and when the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up. Tim Pool, on the other hand, personifies the right wing hate of fact checking. He’s basically a more linguistically coherent Trump; he just says whatever he wants to make his story work, and he doesn’t care what the facts are. He knows his audience won’t fact check what he says.
And that could mean that he knew that the Nord Stream pipeline bombing happened after the invasion, but it could just as easily be that he remembered that the pipeline was bombed but not when or why, and it helps his story to say it was before the invasion.
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They were invited?
That’s how it works with other vampires, anyway…
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I suspect Russians have photos of what is under that knit cap and are black mailing this man.
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