Right-Wing Provocateur Lauren Chen Fired By The Blaze Amid Russian Propaganda Scandal

Isaac SchorrSep 5th, 2024, 2:24 pm
 

Lauren Chen

The Blaze fired right-wing provocateur Lauren Chen on Thursday, less than 24 hours after it was revealed that Chen and her husband allegedly played a key role in a Russian influence operation.

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced that it was charging two Russian nationals working for RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, with violating the the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with a scheme to pay out large sums of money to a company that was later identified by media outlets as Chen’s Tenet Media for pushing what amounted to Russian propaganda.

“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

On Thursday, Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon told Semafor that “Lauren Chen was an independent contractor” for The Blaze and that her contract had been “terminated.”

According to the indictment, Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, referred to as Founder-1 and Founder-2 in the document, “worked together to mask U.S. Company-1’s [Tenet’s] true source of funding,” including from the company’s own talent — which includes Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin.

Chen and Donovan allegedly told those they recruited to the company that the seed money for the company had come from “Eduard Grigoriann,” a fake person for whom they created a fake internet profile.

All told, the Russian allegedly dished out close to $10 million to Tenet, which “never disclosed to its viewers that it was funded and directed by RT” or registered “with the Attorney General as an agent of a foreign principal.”

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