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From the Daily Beast: Trumpâs New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist
If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlinâs official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, has been living in San Diego, where OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, heâs been simultaneously writing for Sputnik, a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russiaâs 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.
Rouzâs on-air reports for OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming Hillary Clinton is secretly bankrolling antifathrough her political action committee. Clinton, Rouz claimed falsely, gave antifa protesters $800,000 that âwent toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.âÂ
In another report, Rouz cast Clintonâs criticism of Brexit as an extension of her âgrievous insults and fake narratives against Russiaââan assertion that makes sense only in the context of Rouzâs multiple reports claiming Russia was framed for hacking Democrats.
In all of Rouzâs OAN segments reviewed by The Daily Beast, he is introduced as a âOne America correspondent,â with no disclosure of his work for Russiaâs state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.Â
âThis completes the merger between Russian state-sponsored propaganda and American conservative media,â said former FBI agent Clint Watts, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. âWe used to think of it as âThey just have the same viewsâ or âThey use the same story leads.â But now they have the same personnel.â
Rouz joined OAN at a time when his Russian employer was coming under heightened scrutiny over its role in Putinâs election interference, and its efforts to expand its American influence.
One America pushes some of the same false stories as Sputnik and RT, but with none of the legal entanglements.Â
Founded and helmed by 77-year-old circuit-board millionaire Robert Herring Sr., OAN launched in 2013 as an answer to the chatty, opinionated content of mainstream cable-news channelsâand a place for viewers too conservative for Fox News.Â
Over time, the network became increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russiaâs global agenda. When Rouz joined, the network had recently shed a number of anchors and other staffers whoâd bristled at the change.Â
Though itâs available in only a handful of cable markets, OANâs viewership includes some influential figures, including Traitor Trump himself. Trump has already fallen for at least two fake stories after seeing them on OAN.
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