Campaigns, PACs and nonprofits on the left and the right now pay creators to post political messages as their own. So did Russian state media. Here's what it costs, who's paying, and the gap in federal law that keeps it hidden.
By Joseph J. Jackson | FMNN Investigates: National (Nov. 10, 2026)
Part 1 of 6 in an FMNN Investigates series on paid political propaganda. Part 2, The Gap, is next.
The short version
It's an industry now. Campaigns, PACs and nonprofits on both sides pay creators to post political messages. Reported rates run from a few dollars to more than $30,000 a post.
Both parties do it. A Sixteen Thirty Fund project paid progressive creators up to $8,000 a month, WIRED reported. A Republican digital firm, X Strategies, has been paid by campaigns including Florida Rep. Byron Donalds'.
A foreign government did it too. The Justice Department says Russia's RT secretly wired about $9.7 million to a Tennessee creator company, nearly 90% of its deposits.
No one has to tell you. No federal law requires a creator to disclose a paid political post on their own account when a U.S. campaign, PAC or nonprofit pays.
This is legal. Under current law, paid political posts are not treason, terrorism or sedition. The problem this series documents is disclosure, and the system meant to enforce it has stopped working.
How to read this series. Under current U.S. law, being paid to post political content, even deceptively, is not treason, terrorism or sedition. Treason requires levying war or aiding "enemies," proven by two witnesses to the same overt act. Domestic terrorism requires acts dangerous to human life. This series does not call any named person a traitor or a terrorist. Where it says "Israel," it means Israel's government or its Diaspora Affairs Ministry, never Jews. Where an outlet relied on anonymous sources, the claim is credited to that outlet and any denial follows. The argument of this series is that the law has not caught up, not that anyone named here broke it.
You've seen the post. A creator you follow, maybe one you trust, suddenly cares about a Senate race in Kentucky, or a marijuana bill, or a candidate for governor in California. The take sounds like theirs. Sometimes it is. Sometimes someone paid for it.
There's no way for you to know which, because federal law doesn't require them to say.
FMNN went through a federal indictment, federal and state records cited in published reports, and reporting from more than a dozen outlets to build a simple thing: a price list. Who pays for political posts, how much it costs, how the money moves, and why it stays hidden. What we found is a trade that both parties use, that at least one foreign government has bought into, and that no federal agency is currently able to police.
The going rate
There's no posted menu, but the numbers in the public record give a range.
A 2026 report by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the University of Pittsburgh found per-post fees running from a few dollars to more than $30,000. A creator's agent told The Wall Street Journal that typical political deals run $5,000 to $20,000 per post. In California's 2026 governor's race, Tom Steyer's campaign paid more than 100 creators, with payments ranging from about $10 a post to a reported $400,000 for one creator, Semafor reported.
Some deals are monthly retainers instead. A Sixteen Thirty Fund project paid creators up to $8,000 a month, according to WIRED. Florida records show Rep. Byron Donalds' campaign and a supporting PAC each paid a Republican digital firm $6,250 a month for most of 2025, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.
Who's paying: the left
Chorus. In August 2025, WIRED's Taylor Lorenz reported that Chorus, a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a large Democratic-aligned dark-money network, paid more than 90 progressive creators up to $8,000 a month. WIRED reported that the contracts barred creators from disclosing their payments or naming funders. Some creators called the story "debunked," and Chorus pointed to its public website. Lorenz says WIRED issued no correction. House Oversight Chair James Comer asked for Chorus contracts and nondisclosure agreements in November 2025. FMNN found no public result of that inquiry.
Way to Win. RealClearInvestigations reported that the progressive group Way to Win spent more than $9.1 million on more than 550 creators in 2024, routed through nonprofits and talent agencies. None of it shows up in federal campaign finance records.
The Harris and Biden campaigns. The Biden-Harris campaign reported nearly $4 million in "digital consulting" to Village Marketing Agency, which does not appear to list the creators it paid, according to a Campaign Legal Center petition to the FEC. The Harris campaign paid more than $600,000 to another agency, Good Influence, Current Affairs reported. In both cases the filing names the agency, not the creators.
Steyer. In California, the Steyer campaign paid creators sums including the reported $400,000, and a $100,000 payment to an LLC tied to creator Carlos Espina was logged as "strategic advice and campaign surrogacy," The New York Times reported. The campaign denied wrongdoing and said creators were told to disclose. California's ethics agency agreed and closed the case on Sept. 14, 2026, with no fines.
Who's paying: the right
X Strategies. The Lexington Herald-Leader found that Nate Morris's Kentucky Senate campaign and an allied PAC paid West Palm Beach–based X Strategies at least $150,000. Over the same period, accounts run by people tied to the firm, with about 4.8 million combined followers, posted near-identical pro-Morris messages 20 times. The Morris campaign said it has "no relationship" with those three account holders. X Strategies co-founder Alex Bruesewitz called the questions "fake news."
The same firm has other clients. A pro-Tom Cotton PAC has paid it $10,000 a month since August 2025, and Florida records show Byron Donalds' campaign and a supporting PAC each paid it $6,250 a month for most of 2025, the Herald-Leader reported.
Marijuana money. The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2026 that Bruesewitz promoted marijuana rescheduling without disclosing $300,000 from a committee funded by the marijuana industry. The Journal also reported that a Florida marijuana ballot committee paid commentator Rogan O'Handley $59,000 and $105,000 in 2024. O'Handley says his posts were disclosed.
Laura Loomer. The Washington Post reported on Nov. 7, 2026, that Loomer and her Florida company, King Breaker Media, received four payments totaling more than $60,000 since May 2025. The documents the Post reviewed don't say what the payments were for. Bruesewitz told the Post, on the record, that he paid her through X Strategies for policy posts. Two people told the Post she charges "$3,000 to $5,000 per tweet, and sometimes more."
Loomer denies it. "I certainly don't charge $5,000 for a tweet," she told the Post. She said her business is public affairs and opposition research, that X Strategies paid her for a research document, and that "It's not illegal to make a living in America."
She's right about that last part. Nothing in federal law bars these payments or requires them to be disclosed. That's the point of this series.
Who's paying: a foreign government
The clearest money trail on record doesn't start in either party. It starts in Moscow.
In September 2024, the Justice Department charged two employees of RT, Russia's state-run media outlet, with secretly funding a Tennessee company that matches Tenet Media. According to the indictment, RT wired about $9.7 million to the company between October 2023 and August 2024, through shell companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Mauritius. That money made up nearly 90% of the company's bank deposits.
The wires were disguised. One for $318,800 carried the memo "BUYING GOODS-INV.013-IPHONE 15 PRO MAX 512GB." The company's founders told the talent a private investor named "Eduard Grigoriann" was behind it. The indictment says he didn't exist.
About $8.7 million went on to the production companies of three commentators, one of whom had a contract worth $400,000 a month, CBS News reported. Tenet posted nearly 2,000 videos with more than 16 million YouTube views.
The Justice Department's own filing says the commentators did not know RT was behind the money, and none of them was charged. Commentators including Tim Pool and Benny Johnson said they were deceived and are victims. The two RT employees charged, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, remain at large. In December 2025, Tenet's Canadian founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who were not charged in that indictment, were allowed back into the United States, according to the Immigration Policy Tracking Project.
Russia isn't the only foreign buyer. The New York Times reported that Israel's Diaspora Affairs Ministry paid for a 2024 campaign aimed at U.S. lawmakers that Meta and OpenAI traced to a firm called Stoic; the ministry denies it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's government also paid $900,000 through a firm called Bridges Partners for a creator effort called the "Esther Project," which registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in September 2025. A later part of this series covers foreign buyers in full.
How the money hides
The path is nearly the same no matter who's paying.
A donor gives to a nonprofit or an LLC. A 501(c)(4) "social welfare" group doesn't have to name its donors. Neither, now, does a U.S. shell company: in August 2026, the Treasury Department permanently exempted U.S. companies from reporting who owns them.
The nonprofit or LLC pays a super PAC, a campaign vendor or an agency. The super PAC's federal report names the nonprofit, not the person. In 2024, super PACs reported more than $1 billion from shell companies and dark-money groups, according to OpenSecrets.
The agency pays the creators. The campaign's report, if there is one, names only the agency.
The creator posts as if the views were their own. No label is required.
At step 4, the only record left is a bank file. And as the Tenet case shows, wires from offshore shells, labeled as phone purchases, that make up nine-tenths of a small U.S. firm's deposits for ten months are exactly what anti-money-laundering rules exist to flag. Whether any bank flagged them is unknown, because those reports are confidential by law.
The hole in the middle
Four federal agencies each cover a slice of paid speech. A U.S. creator paid by a U.S. campaign fits none of them.
The FTC requires "#ad" disclosures for paid product endorsements, but it has no power over political speech.
The FEC's 2022 internet rule covers ads placed on someone else's site or platform for a fee. In January 2024, the FEC said that rule does not reach a person paid to post political content on their own page. Two commissioners said the agency "missed a golden opportunity."
FARA covers only agents of foreign governments and parties.
The FCC's sponsorship rules cover broadcasters, not the internet.
So a brand that pays a creator to plug shampoo has to disclose it. A campaign that pays the same creator to push a candidate does not.
And the agency that would enforce the rules that do exist isn't working. The FEC has had no quorum since May 1, 2025, after a string of resignations and the president's removal of a Democratic commissioner. Without four votes it can't open investigations, fine anyone or issue guidance. Its backlog grew from 190 cases in December 2025 to 307 by September 2026. Two Republican nominees named in February 2026 still had no Senate committee hearing as of mid-September.
Voters aren't split on the basic idea. In a Rainey Center survey, 48% said campaigns shouldn't be allowed to pay creators even with disclosure.
The states that moved first
With Washington stalled, two big states acted. In June 2024, the Texas Ethics Commission voted 7–0 to require disclosure when a creator is paid more than $100 for political content. In September 2026, California added $5,000 fines under AB 1130.
In Congress, bills to close the gap exist on both sides of the aisle. The updated DISCLOSE Act, reintroduced in March 2026 with all 47 Senate Democrats signed on, now covers creator payments. Rep. Mark Takano and Sen. Adam Schiff filed the PAID Act. And Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, filed the Foreign Propaganda Disclosure Act in August 2026 to add paid creators to FARA. None has had a vote.
What the payers say
Loomer denies charging per tweet and says X Strategies paid her for a research document. "It's not illegal to make a living in America."
X Strategies' Alex Bruesewitz called the Herald-Leader's questions "fake news," and told The Washington Post on the record that he paid Loomer for policy posts.
The Morris campaign says it has "no relationship" with the account holders who posted for Morris.
The Steyer campaign denied wrongdoing and said creators were told to disclose; California's ethics agency closed the case without fines.
Chorus pointed to its public website, and some creators called WIRED's story "debunked."
Tenet commentators including Tim Pool and Benny Johnson say they were deceived, and the Justice Department agrees they didn't know RT was the source.
Anyone named in this story is welcome to respond at j@floridamannewsnetwork.com. FMNN will add responses here.
What's next in this series
This is Part 1 of six.
Part 2: The Gap. Every chance Congress had to require disclosure between 2010 and 2026, who blocked it, and what the new Congress could realistically do in its first 100 days.
Part 3: Foreign Buyers. Russia, China, Iran and Israel's government, and what Washington stopped watching in 2025.
Part 4: The Megaphone Owners. Who owns the platforms and stations, and how "money is speech" changed who gets heard.
Part 5: Opinion: This Is a War. The front line is your phone, and the decade Washington could have had.
Part 6: The Hate Is the Product. How bigotry became America's domestic propaganda.
Related reading
Supreme Court Disbars Larry Klayman, Laura Loomer's Longtime Lawyer
No, Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed Was Not "Denied a Security Clearance"
Sources
Net Influencer, report on the political influencer industry (CDT / University of Pittsburgh)
Net Influencer, Steyer campaign cleared of fines (Sept. 2026)
The New York Times via Pulse, political money flowing to influencers
Campaign Legal Center, FEC influencer rulemaking petition (Oct. 2025)
Lexington Herald-Leader via KDH News, Morris and X Strategies
U.S. Department of Justice, two RT employees indicted (Sept. 2024)
Immigration Policy Tracking Project, Tenet founders readmitted
The New York Times via Boston Globe, Israel's ministry campaign (June 2024)
GBH News, why truth-in-advertising rules don't apply to political ads
House Administration Democrats, DISCLOSE Act reintroduced (March 2026)
U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3 · 18 U.S.C. §2331 · Cramer v. United States (1945)
Photo: Tech Daily / Unsplash.