Trump Admin Scores Visa for Founder of Russian Propaganda Outlet [View all]

[Miles Archer]

Trump Admin Scores Visa for Founder of Russian Propaganda Outlet

Tenet Media’s Lauren Chen is back—even though the illegal-influence and money-laundering investigation remains open.

Will Sommer Dec 29, 2025

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/lauren-chen-trump-administration-scores-visa-for-founder-russian-propaganda-outlet-tenet

RIGHT-WING MEDIA PERSONALITY Lauren Chen left the United States in July in disgrace. Her Tenet Media YouTube channel, which positioned itself as a sort of MAGA supergroup bringing together such popular commentators as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin, had been exposed in 2024 by the FBI as a Russian media front illicitly taking money from pro-Putin propaganda outlet RT.

The September 2024 indictment from the Southern District of New York targeted Tenet’s FARA-skirting Russian funders, not Chen or her husband, Liam Donovan. But the Canadian couple were clearly described in the indictment as allegedly scheming with RT employees to direct $10 million to Tenet and even create a fictional persona to mislead one pundit about the source of the funding.

In the wake of the indictment, Chen lost her work visa and was forced to leave the country. She also vanished from social media. It seemed unlikely she would return to the United States anytime soon.

But this holiday season, Chen and her husband were back in Nashville, where she lived while running Tenet. She broke the news herself, by announcing on Instagram and X on Christmas Day that she could now return to the United States, and specifically thanking the State Department’s Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs and former Trump presidential campaign worker, for his help.