"THE TV EXEC, THE OLIGARCH & the Global Far Right" by Sian Norris and Heidi Siegmund Cuda
THE TV EXEC, THE OLIGARCH
& the Global Far Right
Sian Norris and Heidi Siegmund Cuda
7 March 2022
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/07/the-tv-exec-the-oligarch-and-the-global-far-right/
Former Fox News executive Jack Hanick was arrested in London on Thursday for violating US sanctions and making false statements to the FBI over his work with Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, according to federal prosecutors.
The
US Justice Department has requested that the UK extradite Jack Hanick.
The arrest came a week after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and two days after US President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address to announce a Department of Justice task force to pursue Russian oligarchs in response to Russia’s war.
Malofeyev – known by US intelligence as the Russian President’s “right arm for operations of political interference in Europe” – has been accused of providing support to rebels in eastern Ukraine. He was
named as one of the “main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea” after Putin invaded in 2014.
Jack Hanick was a director on Fox News for 15 years before he started working with Malofeyev in 2013 on the oligarch’s Tsargrad TV channel.
The Orthodox Christian, pro-Putin, anti-rights media venture has been accused of spreading disinformation and platformed far-right conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones. Tsargrad TV was banned by YouTube in 2020 due to sanctions against Malofeyev.
With Hanick, Malofeyev was building a conservative media empire.
According to court documents, they had been attempting a media expansion into Bulgaria and Greece.
Malofeyev has been quoted as saying:
“I am the owner of the television channel, Tsargrad. We criticise those in power. But one should not criticise Vladimir Putin. That is absolutely forbidden.”
SNIP
Tsargrad TV and a neo-fascist philosopher dubbed ‘Putin’s Rasputin’. Dugin’s beliefs that Russia needs to create a Eurasian empire in opposition to the West, roll-back history and progress to feudalism, and that Ukraine does not have a right to exist, have apparently influenced Putin’s policies.
In the indictment published by the US Justice Department,
Hanick is accused of violating the Emergency Economic Powers Act, having allegedly worked with Malofeyev who was sanctioned by the US in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea.
Hanick is the first person charged with violating sanctions in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion.
MORE...
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From Tsargrad TV, Murdoch & Tucker Carlson to Breitbart, to a global media empire of anti-human rights, propagandizing theories of
The International Religious Right