# Lee Stranahan A writer who moved from the *Huffington Post* to [[Breitbart News]] — recruited and mentored by [[Andrew Breitbart]], with [[Steve Bannon]] as a second mentor — and in 2017 to Russian state radio. He is the vault's most literal case of the pipeline between American right-wing media and the Kremlin's: a Breitbart reporter who said, on joining [[Sputnik News Agency]], "I'm on the Russian payroll now." ## Timeline | Date | Event | |---|---| | 2007–08 | Parody YouTube ads during the Hollywood writers' strike lead to political comedy writing at *HuffPost* | | 2010 | Recruited by Andrew Breitbart | | Spring 2017 | Leaves Breitbart, saying he was kept off White House briefings | | Apr 2017 | Launches *Fault Lines* on Radio Sputnik with Garland Nixon, broadcast in Washington | | Apr 7, 2017 | Tweets doubt that Assad's government was behind the Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack — "I believe it is the rebels" — the Russian government line | | May 2019 | A federal judge rules that RM Broadcasting, which carried Radio Sputnik on a Washington station, must register as a foreign agent; NBC names Stranahan among the hosts | | Feb 2024 | Leaves Sputnik | He later confirmed he was the unnamed reporter in the 2018 GRU indictment who had been in contact with the [[Guccifer 2.0]] persona. ## Why it matters here The Russian state did not need to invent an American voice; it hired one who already had a right-wing audience and put him on the air in the capital. The same talking points then circulated back through the American right. See [[Sputnik News Agency]], [[Tenet Media]] and [[Kremlin Disinformation]]. ## See Also - [[Sputnik News Agency]] · [[RT]] · [[Tenet Media]] - [[Breitbart News]] · [[Andrew Breitbart]] - [[Guccifer 2.0]] · [[Kremlin Disinformation]]