An RT Editor Walks Out, OAN Subpoenas | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

A top editor at Kremlin-backed media conglomerate RT has quit her job in protest of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Maria Baronova, the editor in chief of RT’s Russian-language edition, said she resigned from the outlet in an interview with news outlet Znak.

Baronova told Znak she “has nothing left to talk about” with those who support the invasion of Ukraine, and would not be speaking further about her resignation on social media platforms.

Baronova previously spoke out against the invasion in a post on her Telegram. In a post published Feb. 26, she described Putin’s government as “totalitarian” and said it has turned the lives of Russians into “an endless hell.”

The post was a response to Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of English-language RT and a close Putin adviser, who has mocked Russians objecting to the war.

“If you are ashamed of being Russian now, don’t worry, you are not Russian,” Simonyan said as thousands took to the streets in Russia to protest the invasion last week.

Baronova took an unlikely path to the top of RT’s masthead. In 2019, when she first joined the Kremlin-funded news outlet, she was known as an opposition activist. Time magazine once described her as “the face of Russia’s opposition.”

In an interview with Gessen, Baronova appeared to express hope that she could change Russia for the better through her job at RT. Some, like opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were skeptical

Baronova’s move to the state-funded network was a baffling choice, and her explanation for it was thin. But publicly criticizing the invasion, and walking out of RT, was the right thing to do. And it’s a public blow to RT, which was just shut down on DirecTV.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol announced on Tuesday it has subpoenaed One America News Network (OANN) host Christina Bobb.

Bobb isn’t alone. Also from the network, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesebro, Katherine Friess, Kurt Olsen, and Phillip Kline were issued subpoenas.

Bobb “was reportedly involved in efforts to draft an executive order for then-President [Donald] Trump that would have directed federal agencies to seize voting machines in numerous states and was present in the ‘war room’ of Rudy Giuliani’s legal team in the Willard Hotel on January 6th,” said the committee in a statement.

“I mean, he took a very tough stance against Russia. I’m surprised you don’t think that he would have handled this better than Joe Biden,” he said as the list was on screen.

“The Select Committee is seeking information about attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of electoral votes and any efforts to corruptly change the outcome of the 2020 election,” writes Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) for the committee.

“The six individuals we’ve subpoenaed today all have knowledge related to those matters and will help the Select Committee better understand all the various strategies employed to potentially affect the outcome of the election,” he said.

OAN has been deeply embroiled in claims about the 2020 election. They were sued last year by Dominion Voting Systems and by Smartmatic, and after months of pressure on AT&T, the channel was dropped from DirecTV.

With multiple subpoenas directed at OAN now, and the suggestion that Bobb was directly involved with Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, things continue to look down for the network. And of course, for Bobb in particular.