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Unions condemn British police over arrest of journalist
Reporter Richard Medhurst was held in detention for nearly 24 hours under the UK's anti-terror law

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Sarah Wilkinson “is arguably Britain’s most dedicated and prolific online chronicler of the plight of Palestinians, posting graphic and horrifying evidence of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza multiple times a day on her social media platforms. But last Thursday at dawn, British counter-terrorism authorities decided to silence her.”

Like Grayzone journalist Richard Medhurst, detained on August 15 at Heathrow Airport, Wilkinson has been released on bail but could face as much as 14 years in jail under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

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Statement on the DOJ indictment:

These allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme.

I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period.

‘People of the Internet’ was a silly show covering viral videos which ended four months ago.

The DoJ has never contacted me regarding this matter and I have no intention to comment further.

This screenshot directly from the indictment speaks for itself…

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The two indicted Russians are Kostiantyn "Kostya" Kalashnikov and Elena "Lena" Afanasyeva. The indictment says that one of them had discussions with Tenet's founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan (not named in the indictment), about how much to pay commentators Benny Johnson and Tim Pool (also not named in the indictment). Pool was then in direct contact with someone he believed to be a Hungarian businessman. The "Hungarians" had offered $2 million per year for each of them. Pool wanted $5 million per year, while Johnson, who wanted $100,000 per episode, was unhappy that the supposed businessman's (fake) C.V. said he supported "social justice": he didn't mind taking money from a sketchy pro-Russian businessman he'd never heard of, but he didn't like the idea of working for someone who held woke views. Eventually Johnson and Pool agreed to make four weekly videos each month for which they would each be paid $400,000 per month. (Pool negotiated a $100,000 signing bonus on top.) Over the course of ten months (Oct. 2023-Aug. 2024), the Russian wire transfers to Tenet totaled more than $9 million and accounted for 90% of its income.

Elon Musk has promoted Tenet's work several times.

As for the targets of the new U.S. sanctions: they include Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT (formerly Russia Today). Reporter Julia Davis notes that Simonyan has been plainly saying for a while that Russia was engaged in the sort of misinformation to which the U.S. today with the sanctions and indictments -- activity which Davis been regularly documenting for years. (Davis has occasionally been cited here, mainly the in the Ukraine thread.) The indictment quotes Simonyan as saying in February 2024 that it didn't matter that RT had been effectively banished in the U.S. since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, because RT had created an "enormous network, an entire empire of covert projects that is working with the public opinion" in the West. Some of that is probably braggadocio, but I notice that while the indicted Russians didn't set up their arrangement to pay Tenet's commentators until 2023, Tenet itself was founded in January 2022.

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