According to right-wing media outlets and personalities, the mainstream press spent too much time covering the revolt by Russian mercenary army the Wagner Group — led by former close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin — and not enough time talking about their own pet stories involving President Joe Biden. Herein, they say, lies the potential conspiracy, orchestrated by either a devious media machine or possibly even the U.S. government itself in order to distract Americans from the Bidens’ alleged corruption.

Russia just suffered an armed rebellion more than a year after its invasion of Ukraine

Prigozhin announced over the weekend that his forces, which have played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were rebelling and had entered the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, seeking the removal of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The rebellion seemingly fizzled, with a deal announced by Putin-allied repressive leader Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, for Prigozhin to go into exile in Belarus. As of Monday, Prighozin’s future is still highly uncertain. (In an address Monday night Russian time, Putin declared that those responsible for the uprising will “be brought to justice.”)

This ongoing event poses serious dangers going forward, both in terms of Russia’s continued political stability as well as the future of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, whether it remains in the hands of the Putin regime or falls to another should any rebellion prove successful. Atlantic Council senior fellow Ariel Cohen wrote: “Prigozhin has demonstrated just how weak the Putin regime is and how the Russian president’s own ‘chef’ could potentially put nuclear-armed Russia into the hands of a fragile and extremely dangerous dictatorship of former KGB officers and hardened criminals.”

Right-wing media portrayed the rebellion as an excuse to avoid covering their Hunter Biden narratives, with some even suggesting that the U.S. was behind it

Some in right-wing media have claimed that the U.S. government had orchestrated the mutiny, potentially in order to serve a warmongering agenda. This commentary is in line with right-wing media’s tendency to blame anybody but Putin for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Others on the right have posited that the rebellion served a desired media narrative in order to distract from alleged corruption by President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. And in an even deeper journey into the fevered imagination, some posit that the White House arranged the rebellion for that specific purpose.

This particular angle stems from the right-wing media narrative that took hold last week regarding a message Hunter Biden reportedly sent to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 in which he demanded the completion of a business deal while claiming that his father was with him. (This narrative falls apart for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that Joe Biden did not hold any public office in July 2017.)

• Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo said the State Department was “drumming up all the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia” to distract from the Hunter Biden text: “The White House wanted to give the media something else to cover. And this is the M.O. This is exactly the way they do things. In fact, on Friday, I said, wow, what a blockbuster WhatsApp message. I’m sure there will be an enormous story over the weekend that the White House is going to be pushing to take this story off of the front page. And sure enough, we’ve got the State Department drumming up all the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia.” (Back in February 2022, Bartiromo repeatedly claimed that Russia’s buildup to invade Ukraine was really just a “ruse” created by the Biden administration in order to distract from something to do with Hillary Clinton.) [Fox News, Fox & Friends Sunday, 6/25/23]
• Fox News’ Griff Jenkins said Russia’s armed rebellion is “the perfect excuse” to ignore news about Hunter Biden. While hosting Fox’s The Big Weekend Show, Jenkins said: “Meanwhile, the mainstream media going all-in on that Russian rebellion, giving the perfect excuse to ignore those damning Hunter Biden WhatsApp messages that appear to implicate President Biden’s role in the family corruption scheme. The Sunday shows on the networks spending 39-plus minutes on the Wagner Group, and no, not a bit, no coverage at all of the Hunter messages. The one time Hunter was mentioned, Democrat senator Amy Klobuchar shrugged off any concerns about him. Watch.” [Fox News, The Big Weekend Show, 6/25/23]
• Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy repeatedly suggested that the U.S. was behind the armed rebellion. Campos-Duffy commented on Prigozhin being a mercenary and asked guest Rebekah Koffler, “Is there any possibility at all that the United States has anything to do with this?” Later, she said to guest K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump: “I asked our last guest on this topic … if she thought it was possible that we could be behind this attempted coup with the Wagner Group, and she said it's definitely one of the possibilities. Or NATO.” McFarland responded that she might be right and suggested that the CIA was behind the 2014 ousting of a pro-Russian president in Ukraine. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 6/24/23, 6/24/23]
• Fox contributor and former congressman Sean Duffy said he did not believe Biden when he said the U.S. was not involved in the revolt. “Joe Biden has called for regime change in Russia,” Duffy said. “So then to say, ‘Well, we had no — the West has nothing to do with this Wagner Group and this rebellion,’ … I don't know that I trust anything that comes out of the White House any longer. I want to, I want to believe them, I want to trust them. But they keep lying to me, which makes me not believe them any longer.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 6/26/23]
• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: The Russian armed rebellion is part of a “beautiful smokescreen” for media outlets to avoid covering conservative narratives about Hunter Biden. [Newsmax, Wake Up America, 6/26/23]
• Gateway Pundit: “MTG hints US government could be behind Russia coup attempt.” On June 24, Gateway Pundit wrote that Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) “just like many other Americans finds the entire ordeal very suspicious and told her followers on Twitter ‘After our government has been funding a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine for over a year, I sure hope our government isn’t behind a coup attempt currently happening in Russia.’” [Gateway Pundit, 6/24/23]
• Pro-Trump Twitter account The Trump Train lamented that Twitter’s trending topics were about the rebellion instead of Hunter Biden: “Look at all the trending topics on Twitter right now. … Not a single topic about the bombshell text messages recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop.” [Twitter, 6/26/23]
• Pro-Trump Twitter account Catturd called the rebellion a “planned distraction” from “the solid proof of Joe and Hunter Biden’s treason.” [Twitter, 6/23/23]
• Catturd continued parroting the line that the rebellion is just a distraction: “The Democrat party state run propaganda media will be breathlessly talking about Russia this weekend to distract you from the fact Hunter and Joe Biden just got caught red-handed committing treason.” [Twitter, 6/24/23]
• Far-right troll Laura Loomer said Biden orchestrated the rebellion. On Twitter, Loomer wrote: “I truly believe the US Government is working with the CIA to stage a coup in Russia to oust Putin so that Joe Biden can campaign on toppling Putin in 2024. Just seems like this is all coordinated so Biden can take credit for ending the Ukraine-Russia war and pretend to be a hero. The US government is the biggest terrorist organization in the world.” [Twitter, 6/24/23]
• Right-wing political strategist Joey Mannarino claimed that the CIA was behind the rebellion to distract from Hunter Biden: “First the submarine. Now the CIA staging a coup against Putin. Just keep talking about anything but Hunter Biden, huh? Joe will start World War Three before he lets the media actually scrutinize his bribes.” [Twitter, 6/24/23]