I haven't seen any specific reporting on what Tenet was actually compensating Matt.
But if the lump sump reported in seed money was 10 million. And Pool and Rubin were each promised ~ 5 mil/yr. I saw another report that Chen and her husband were paid around 760k.
Adding these numbers together, there’s very little left to pay Commentators 3 through 6.
TL;DR - Christiansen likely had no cause to be suspicious because they offered him so little compared to Pool & Rubin.
While trying to find background on Liam Donovan (who doesn't have much of an Internet footprint), I came across other non-Kim Iversen sources claiming the indictment specifically mentions Chen & Donovan openly referring to "the Russians".
Fwiw, I like Chen and don't really care that much about Russian funding.
The case does really hinge though, in the court of public opinion at least, if she knowingly and surreptitiously accepted Russian monies.
I really know nothing about her husband Liam Donovan.
All I know is that they were living in either Cornwall, Ontario or Hudson, Quebec during the start of the pandemic. She was still in Canada when Trudeau won his last election in Sept 2021.
She then moved to Nashville afterwards claiming COVID restrictions as the reason.
This indicates that she and her husband are both jabbed because it's a requirement for obtaining a visa.
Immigration from Canada to the US is still visa based. You generally need a spouse or an employer to sponsor you.
It seems though that YTubers have it easier to get approved. Viva Frei got a three year visa to be a self-employed streamer moving from Quebec to Florida in 2022. He too was jabbed.
IIRC, Chen talked about her own move to Nashville in 2022 in permanent terms.
Who is Shapiro’s audience at this point?
I watched Potentially Criminal (Sean Martin), a lawyer, review some of the indictment as well.
I didn't actually come across any parts where Chen and her husband explicitly refer to Russians in their communications.
The smoking gun in the parts he reviewed was Chen, apparently already under surveillance, googling "What time is it in Moscow?" when she didn't immediately receive a response to a request why their money to pay Rubin & Pool was 2 weeks late from their "Paris" contact.
Ferryman's Toll (Alex) is one of the three horseman of Canada’s meme terrorist group Diagolon.
It's certainly clear from the indictment if taken at face value that the Russian glowies never had any intention of recouping any of their investment.
Anyone who followed Chen and the 6 commentators before and after though would have a hard time pointing towards any pro-Russian interest editorial changes.
Which either means
- the DOJ is lying about the whole thing OR
- Putin really does support Kamala over Trump and was willing to waste millions and use glowie resources to smear the names of a few milquetoast Con Inc influencers
Why are there US flags on the building in the background?
Is that the US Embassy in London?
Or did this MAP take his degeneracy across the pond?
Chen was a silent partner in the Tenet startup.
She seemed to use her name, connections and notoriety to broker deals behind the scenes and manage, but never publicly acknowledged AFAICT that she was in anyway involved with the enterprise or lent her name, image or following to the brand from an influencer or commentator sense.
The indictment documents indicate she was being paid 96k a year to manage the company along with some possible 8k payments to sign Pool and Rubin.
I guess it all comes down to whether you believe that she was able to put an editorial wall between her back channel endeavors and her public facing personalized commentary.
Nothing I've seen in the indictment suggests that her benefactors were paying to influence her actual personalized branded content on her channel.
Personally, I have the possibly naive/optimistic view that all her Zionist criticism, repeal the 19th, mild Trump criticism and Groyper adjacent personal public views have absolutely nothing to do with possible foreign influence meddling.
No worries.
I only came across it by chance some time ago when reading about Tenet on the Dave Rubin hate subreddit.
It's way beyond that.
He keeps parroting that the search warrant of Nick's house was invalid and politically motivated when the police and CPS had multiple people come forward re: his drug use, his strange behavior and the welfare of his children including his pastor, his wife's sister and the man cucking him.
He also argues in bad faith to anyone pointing out holes in his wild theories finding fault in anyone but his cokehead deadbeat dad Internet friend, calling Josh Moon and fellow Lawtube lawyers pedos simply because they filed legal requests to have the bodycam of Rekieta's arrest released publicly.
Which Nick has made every legal effort possible to keep sealed.
Her Canadian business registry is under the name "Lauren Yu Sum Tam".
Chen is a stage name, not her legal name.
There were some business documents surrounding Tenet that leaked a few months back with her actual legal name.
I believe what the creators say.
It sounds like Pool made a ridiculous opening demand of 100k an episode when first approached and was probably shocked when it was accepted.
Tenet was paying Pool 100k/week simply to "host" the Culture War spinoff show, but Pool somehow retained all rights to the actual intellectual property as per the contract.
Not sure.
Her husband is Liam Donovan IIRC.
The indictment listed them both as foreign nationals/non-US citizens.
I'd always thought that Chen herself had citizenship and that her husband was American, which was what made their fleeing from Canada in 2022 so expedient.
The courts managed to freeze the Canadian truckers' bitcoin assets at the same time as Trudeau froze bank accounts.
AFAIK, they are still frozen under court order all this time later.
Another interesting thing about the indictment is that it alleges she was bought for cheap.
She was being paid 8k/month to found the enterprise, recruit the "talent" and act as the go between with the fake French/Czech investors and the media personalities.
But Rubin and Pool themselves were being paid 400k/month each to keep churning their shitty products under the new branding.
The indictment, fwiw, really implicates Chen rather than her husband.
The sections I've seen reviewed online have her as the main contact with the Russian assets and her husband barely mentioned whatsoever.
Potentially Criminal (Sean Martin), Cleveland criminal defense lawyer, reviewed the indictment docs tonight on stream.
The indictment alleges that there was no economic case to pay Pool & Rubin what their initial demands were. But that was the whole point, as the Russian glowies didn't care about getting a return on their investment.
In the documents, Chen and her husband returned to their Russian handlers (who were posing as a fake French oligarch at the time) after having approached Rubin and Pool and collecting their initial demands. Rubin initially wanted 2 million/yr and Pool wanted 100k/week or episode.
Chen and her husband returned to their Russian contact after initial outreach, stating it would be impossible to recoup the investment via YT revenue and sponsors and that they should move on to other creators.
The Russians said "No, no. We want Rubin and Pool badly. We'll pay whatever".
Pool ended up getting close to what he demanded. They actually gave Rubin over double his OG demand, as he actually ended up making 400k/month plus a 100k signing bonus.
Just a reminder, Robert Barnes is full blown running interference for Nick Rekieta after he was arrested for cocaine possession while neglecting his five children and living in a polycule while another man fucked his wife in the same bed he was sleeping in.
Listened to Kim Iversen tonight.
She personally read through the whole indictment.
Kim claims that the indictment specifically mentions that Chen & her husband were both personally aware of the Russian source of their funding.
She says that quotes from their communications cited have both of them specifically referring to "the Russians" when talking about their backers.
It's strange that there hasn't been a sanitized public statement from Chen's lawyers yet.
I have no real feelings on Matt.
This comes off differently for those of us that know Christiansen's history.
There are years of tradition among his paypigs that send in chats live with "Matt & I made love..." homoerotic narratives.
Matt is married with children btw.
What company is more pro-Trump than Tenet?
The Blaze? Daily Wire?
Lauren Chen has been flirting with the Groypers lately, specifically criticizing Trump for abandoning his pro-life base.
Pool is an eternal fencesitter.
Rubin is a DeSantis guy.
Johnson seems very partisan in the Posobiec mould.
Lauren Southern is Canadian.
Matt Christiansen is pro-Trump in an agnostic, Federalist sort of way.
Don't know much about Tayler Hansen. His shtick seems to be conservative man-on-the-street gotcha reporting.
Off topic, but how do you feel about Calvin Robinson leaving the LE to flee to a parish in the US?
I suppose that indicates he's jabbed as well.