Alina Habba’s desperate attempt to downplay new Russia scandal fails

Trump campaign advisers aren’t distancing themselves from Tenet Media, the conservative media operation accused of taking millions of dollars from Russia to spread foreign propaganda. Instead, they’ve decided to defend it.

Trump campaign senior adviser Alina Habba on Sunday attempted to debunk the Justice Department’s charges by linking the scandal to the 2016 “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”

“It’s so clear,” Habba told Fox News Sunday morning. “The story now is that there’s a criminal investigation into a $10 million investigation into two individuals who had no idea that they were being supported by a company that ultimately, allegedly, had ties to Russia.”

“So what happened in 2016? There was the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. The media spread a story that we now know was funded by members of the DNC, their lawyers, Hillary Clinton was involved in all of this — we know because she had to pay a fine for it,” Habba continued, referring to the failure of the DNC and Clinton’s campaign to report the costs of the Trump-Russia dossier investigation to the Federal Election Commission in 2016.

Habba then went on to extol the Durham report, an objective failure that found no evidence of FBI wrongdoing during its investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, while condemning the Mueller report — which left the possibility of Trump-Russia obstruction on the table — as a waste of “so much taxpayer money.”

“A $10 million payment to some podcasters who had no knowledge of ties to Russia is now going to put a spin on Russian support for Trump,” Habba added.

The Justice Department’s indictment accused Tenet and its founders of receiving nearly $10 million from employees of Russia Today as part of “a scheme to create and distribute content to the American public with hidden Russian government messages,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

Other entities, even right-wing ones, have not been so quick to side with the allegedly compromised media personalities. The fallout from the alleged propaganda scheme cost Tenet co-founder Lauren Chen her temp job at another far-right media group, Blaze Media. Blaze deleted episodes of her podcast from Spotify and removed her contributors page from its website shortly after the charges were announced, with Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon telling Semafor that the conservative host had been “fired.”

YouTube also removed Tenet Media’s content from its platform “after careful review” following the lawsuit, telling NBC News that its decision to wipe the channel and its affiliates was part of “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”

The Russian funds paid for videos by popular far-right personalities, including podcaster Tim Pool and Lauren Southern. Pool has described herself as a “victim” in the Tenet scandal.

“I have been contacted by the FBI as a potential victim of a crime,” Pool wrote on X on Thursday. “The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and has requested a voluntary interview. I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”