The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a sweeping investigation into Americans who worked with Russia’s state-run television channels. The final scope of the operation is not yet clear, nor is it known what legal basis will ultimately be used in any official charges.
Recently, FBI agents raided the homes of two prominent figures with ties to Russian state media: Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of American foreign policy, and Dimitri K. Simes, an adviser to Donald J. Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016.
More raids are expected soon, said some of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Criminal charges are also possible.
The investigation follows intelligence assessments that Russia’s state-run news organizations, including global news channel RT, are working with Russian intelligence services to influence elections around the world.
That supposedly includes the Trump-Kamala Harris election in November. While there has been significant Russian support for Western conspiracy media and pro-Trump circles in the past, this has been more to stoke general sentiments and has not necessarily indicated Russia’s support for Donald Trump, whose team included figures like General Kellogg, who pushed a very tough policy against Russia, much tougher than what was seen from Obama and Biden.
The investigation has so far focused on possible violations of economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, as well as a law requiring disclosure of lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.
Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter, a guest writer for RT, said in a phone interview that an hours-long search of his home in Delmar, New York, on August 7 appeared to be an attempt to intimidate him for expressing his political views on the United States, Russia and the war in Ukraine.
FBI agents and state police seized cell phones, computers and hard drives but did not arrest him.
From 1991 to 1998, Ritter served as UNSCOM member responsible for overseeing the dismantling of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but resigned in protest at the lack of action against Iraq. He eventually became a critic of the Iraq war, but he does not protest against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Richard Butler, Ritter’s former UNSCOM chief, said that Ritter was wrong about weapons of mass destruction on several occasions.
“When he was the alpha dog inspector, he said there were more weapons somewhere and we had to find them, a claim for which he did not have enough evidence. Then when he became a peace activist, he said it was all complete BS from start to finish; he said there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that, too, was a claim for which he did not have sufficient evidence.”
In February 2005, Ritter wrote on Al Jazeera’s website that the “Iraqi resistance” was a “true grassroots national liberation movement” and that “history will ultimately prove the Iraqi resistance’s efforts to destabilize and defeat American occupation forces and the Iraqi collaborationist government imposed on them to be legitimate.”
Ritter was completely wrong about that, as radical groups proclaimed the “Islamic State,” a grotesque regime.
In June 2001, he was indicted for attempting to arrange a meeting with an undercover agent posing as a 16-year-old girl. He was charged with the misdemeanor of “attempting to endanger the welfare of a child.” The charges were dropped and the record sealed after he served six months of probation.
Ritter was arrested again in November 2009 for communicating with a police decoy he met through an Internet chat site. Police said he exposed himself via webcam after the officer repeatedly identified himself as a 15-year-old girl.
The following month, Ritter was released on $25,000 bail. Charges included “unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communication facility, corruption of minors, exhibitionism, possession of instruments of crime, criminal attempt and criminal solicitation.” Ritter refused to plead guilty and was found guilty on all counts except criminal attempt. In October 2011, Ritter was sentenced to a prison term of from one and a half to five and a half years. He was transferred to Laurel Highlands State Prison in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, in March 2012 and released on parole in September 2014.
When Ritter’s sexual offenses against a minor became public in 2009, he lost his only regular job in recent years – writing analysis of world events for a private energy company – and was reportedly deeply in debt.
In 2022, Ritter, out of the blue, began to comment constantly on the Ukraine war and became a contributor to Russian state media RT and Sputnik. He compared Ukraine to a “rabid dog” that needed to be shot. He also compared the treatment of Russians under Ukrainian law to the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany.
In January 2024, Ritter visited Chechnya and spoke to thousands of Chechen fighters in a central square in Grozny.
Since March 2024, he has been a member of the group “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” along with other figures of his ilk who have links to organizations that in turn are said to be linked to Russian intelligence.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Ritter served as an intelligence analyst.
In June 2024, US authorities confiscated Ritter’s passport and prevented him from traveling to Russia.
In recent years, Ritter, who runs a website and has nearly 400,000 followers on X, has been a guest on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s podcast and on a podcast by former Fox News host Andrew Napolitano. The Schiller Institute, a fringe organization run by the widow of conspiracy influencer Lyndon LaRouche, organized a press conference for Ritter days after his passport was confiscated at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Russia.
Posts similar to Ritter’s are heavily promoted on social media by nebulous user accounts. Last month, the Justice Department ended a secret campaign.
Working with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, as well as officials from Elon Musk’s social media platform X, the department took down 968 inauthentic accounts. The Russians created and operated the accounts using commercially available artificial intelligence.
In affidavits released with the announcement, officials specifically linked the effort to Russia’s domestic intelligence service and RT.
Ritter, who traveled to Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine in January, said the search warrant for his home related to an investigation related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the federal law that requires disclosure of lobbying and political activities on behalf of foreign governments.
Dimitri Simes
Mr. Simes, a Soviet-born American citizen, is under investigation for, among other things, violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the legal basis for imposing economic sanctions, some of the officials said.
On Aug. 13, agents entered a 330-acre wooded property near Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains that Mr. Simes and his wife had bought in July 2021.
Mr. Simes, 76, has been a fixture in American foreign policy debates in Washington since emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1973.
He served as an informal adviser to President Richard M. Nixon on Soviet policy.
In 2016, Mr. Simes hosted then-presidential candidate Trump for a speech calling for improved relations with Putin’s government. He also introduced Mr. Trump to the Russian ambassador at the time.
Mr. Simes also passed on to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, information he believed was incriminating that the Russians had collected on former President Bill Clinton, according to the final report of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign.
Although Simes was interviewed by Mueller’s investigators in 2019 and quoted repeatedly in the report, he was not accused of wrongdoing. He resigned from the Center for the National Interest in 2022 and has been in Russia since October 2022, according to an interview on Friday on Sputnik, another Russian television channel.
Since 2018, he has hosted a weekly talk show, “The Big Game,” on one of Russia’s state-run television channels, Channel One.
In the interview on Sputnik, Mr. Simes said he did not know the reason for the search but speculated it was an attempt to suppress anyone who would improve relations between Russia and the United States. He said his bank accounts had been frozen, except for one, which em his Social Security checks were deposited.
Since 2017, the Justice Department has required RT to register as a foreign agent, not a news organization. There is no clear precedent dictating whether journalists working for a news organization would be subject to the requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
