I think they had contracted with a Russian team to do editing, so they (Chen and her husband) knew they were working with some Russians, but not necessarily that their investor was Russian.

The two bits of "proof" I've heard so far that they knew is that Chen talked once about talking to "the Russians," and her husband once Googled "time in Moscow."

So, anything is possible, but it's pretty dang flimsy so far. I still think the whole thing was a US op, personally. It was definitely done with implicit US permission, since they let it ride, but may have even been done with instruction...if there's even any truth here at all.

Also, I'm not sure how all this FARA stuff works, but the interesting part is that these alleged Russians were known to work for RT...which is registered through FARA. So I guess the claim is they were operating on their own, and not under RT officially, or something. Not sure it matters, but it is interesting that they were already almost registered as foreign agents through RT.

We'll just have to wait (until after the election) and see how bullshit all this is. At least that's my guess; they'll ride it hard until the election, and then it will come out it was bullshit after it no longer matters.