The Clooney Foundation Is Waging Lawfare Against The Employees Of Russian Media

Considering what’s at stake, the latest development in the global information war is certainly significant, but it’s premature to describe it as a game-changer since Russia could flexibly adapt to the new hostile foreign legal environment in which its employees would operate to ensure that their work continues.

The West’s censorship of Russian media over the past two years failed to sway the global public to their side, which is why much more drastic measures are now being planned in order to intimidate that country’s journalists and those foreign nationals that work with its media. Anna Neisat, the legal director of the Clooney Foundation’s Docket Project, told the US’ state-run Voice of America about her employer’s plans in this regard.

According to her, those journalists and others who refer to the Kiev regime as Nazis and talk about the need for de-Ukrainization among other subjects are “inciting genocide”, which makes them liable to charges from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Moreover, there are also some Central European countries whose legislation prohibits “propaganda for aggressive war”, and either they or the ICC could put out international arrest warrants against those who are accused of these crimes.

Neisat declined to reveal who the Clooney Foundation is investigating so that they’ll be surprised by one day traveling somewhere that’ll arrest them upon entering per the demands of the sealed warrants that she’s working to have filed. As part of her duties, she’s also compiling alleged evidence that she purports will prove that the abovementioned narratives are responsible for getting Russian troops to commit war crimes, which include victim testimonies and intercepted communications from the field.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reminded everyone in a Telegram post about how George Clooney, whose Lebanese lawyer wife Amal co-founded their eponymous foundation, has a reputation for taking advantage of various causes like Darfur for self-promotion purposes. If one reads between the lines, she also hints that some of the work that he’s done in the past on that aforesaid issue aligned with the American strategic agenda, which is certainly the case with this latest initiative too.

The West is now waging lawfare against those who work with Russian media after The Atlantic and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), both of which are very influential in their part of the world, admitted last month that Russia is winning the information war. Just like with sanctions, the US always resorts to unilateral measures whenever it can’t win against an opponent fair and square. In this case, it wants to literally ruin people’s lives just for promoting different views about a globally significant conflict.  

While the biggest names in Russian domestic media might never travel to an ICC member state again after this just to be safe, comparatively lesser-known ones in its international media might either still take that risk thinking that they’re not important enough to persecute or presently reside in such states.  These also include non-Russians, who might have to consider whether it’s worth committing their lives to this cause by permanently relocating to Russia if need be or if they should just resign and move on.

The people that are most are risk are those of RT and Sputnik’s employees with visible roles, not so much their publicly unknown editors and technical staff, though anyone who works in those companies’ hubs in ICC-compliant states could theoretically be persecuted in the unlikely worst-case scenario. After all, these employees are the ones responsible for Russia’s victory in the global information war that The Atlantic and RUSI just acknowledged, so it therefore follows that they’re prime targets of this campaign.

With this in mind, it can therefore be concluded that the Clooney Foundation is mostly waging lawfare against RT and Sputnik – particularly their foreign employees as well as all those working in ICC-compliant states – as revenge for their global success, not so much against domestic media celebrities. This is almost certainly being done through some level of collusion with American and other intelligence agencies in order to maximize the intended intimidation effect through at least one high-profile case.

All that it takes is one person being persecuted on this pretext to scare a much larger number into either resigning, working as moles within their companies if they’re quietly offered this sort of deal in order to drop their secret charges, or not even considering working for these companies in the first place. It’s a dastardly psychological operation aimed at dividing-and-ruling Russian media, particularly its international component, in order to hamstring its effectiveness and thus give the West an edge.

In response to these newfound threats to its employees, which Naisat would have done well not to publicly disclose but her ego got the best of her, Russia should consider implementing the following policies. First, it should raise the remuneration of those that are most likely to be at risk, namely the ones with visible roles. Second, it should promulgate legislation expediting citizenship for foreign media employees. And third, it needs to create a sustainable foreign recruitment pipeline for RT and Sputnik.

Regarding the last-mentioned suggestion, foreign specialists might be deterred from joining those companies if a high-profile persecution case occurs, but they might be incentivized to reconsider if Russia offered long-term career opportunities for those that do. For instance, qualified individuals could be offered scholarships at leading Russian universities and the chance to work part-time at RT or Sputnik, with full-time employment and expedited citizenship guaranteed for those that graduate.

While the number of people who’d be willing to take them up on this proposed offer might not be all that large, those that go through with it would be the most committed, and they can in turn become champions in their respective departments. This would keep Russia’s international media running well even in the unlikely worst-case scenario that the Clooney Foundation’s arguably American-coordinated lawfare against its employees succeeds in closing down their hubs in ICC-compliant states.

Considering what’s at stake, the latest development in the global information war is certainly significant, but it’s premature to describe it as a game-changer since Russia could flexibly adapt to the new hostile foreign legal environment in which its employees would operate to ensure that their work continues. Some people’s lives might still be ruined throughout the course of the Clooney Foundation’s crusade against Russian media, but they’ll fail to disrupt this industry’s work in any significant way.