Greenwich native gains notice for pro-Putin website, Jan. 6 riot
GREENWICH — Charles Bausman enjoyed many advantages growing up in Greenwich.
The son of two accomplished parents who were active in their Greenwich church, Bausman studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Wesleyan University and Columbia University. His father, John Bausman who died in 2016, was the head of the Moscow bureau of The Associated Press from 1968 to 1972, and Charles Bausman became fluent in the Russian language.
Bausman went to Russia after studying business at Columbia to work in the agribusiness sector. He married a Russian woman and became a regular commentator on RT (formerly Russia Today), the media and news network owned by the Russian government that “acquaints international audiences with a Russian viewpoint on major global events,” in its description.
Bausman has been a well-known media figure in Russia, and he is now becoming better known in the United States. He is the publisher of an English-language media website that claims the Holocaust is a hoax, excoriates gay people and says Vladimir Putin is the kind of statesman who should set an example to the world.
And this summer, Bausman has been receiving extensive new scrutiny for his role in the shadowy world of proPutin media campaigns and radical domestic politics.
He has come under particular attention for his role on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob breached the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the transfer of presidential authority. No charges have been brought against him, although he is visible in video clips introduced in court cases against others who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, a recent profile on him from The New York Times reported.
In an interview with Russian media, Bausman indicated he was present at the Capitol that day as part of the media. He told a Russian media figure it was a “false-flag operation” staged by the FBI and “agent provocateurs” to “make Trump look bad, to make his supporters look bad.”
The former Greenwich resident was also active in the “Stop the Steal” movement by followers of former President Donald Trump in claiming, without evidence, that he actually won the 2020 presidential election.
Bausman did not respond to requests for comment.
“Bausman has a trail of strange associations with extremist groups,” said Zev Shalev, a former CBS News executive producer who has researched and written extensively on Russia, political radicals and domestic politics. Shalev recently wrote a lengthy article examining Bausman’s pro-Putin stance and his connections to other white supremacists in the U.S. on his news site, Narativ.
As to Bausman’s association with Russian media figures and pro-Putin media, Shalev said, he was part of a larger effort. “There’s a whole network. It’s a complex operation, intended to incite extremism,” he said.
The website Bausman founded in 2014, Russia Insider, has been called part of “a network of racist junk news websites,” by Hatewatch, a research organization that monitors radicals and extremists in the U.S.
RT dropped the former Greenwich resident after he published anti-Semitic web posts in 2018 in the form of an essay entitled “It’s Time to Drop the Jew Taboo.” His website has featured Holocaust denialism and conspiracy theories about Jewish people on a regular basis.
According to a statement from the press office at RT, sent this week, “RT categorically and unequivocally condemns all hate speech and rejects any association to such. Charles Bausman’s views were the key reason why he was blacklisted by the network many years ago.”
Bausman has played up his upbringing in Greenwich in his publishing operation, as well as his family roots in Pennsylvania, where he now maintains a residence. In his writings on Russia Insider, he says he is a devout Christian and is compelled to air his views — which recycle old antiSemitic tropes — on culture and media in the U.S.
After he founded Russia Insider in 2014, Bausman came to Greenwich as part of a campaign to promote the media operation. In an interview, he extolled Putin and criticized what he said was an unfair portrayal of the Russia leader. He scoffed at the idea that Putin had ordered the assassination of dissidents and political foes.
“Anybody who knows anything about Russia,” he said, “knows that Putin is the last person to make this happen. He does not want to look like a dictator killing his opponents.”
On the visit to his hometown in 2015, Bausman gave a talk at the Greenwich Library on current events in Russia
and Ukraine.
Russia Insider now posts essays from a wide assortment of purported scholars and polemicists, with headlines such as “Should the US Have Fought in World War II? Absolutely Not!” and “How Jews Gave America Gay Marriage.”
The site has a particular hostility for Winston Churchill, the wartime leader of Great Britain, attacking him as a war criminal in numerous posts with headlines like “Let’s Be Honest — Stalin Was Less of a Criminal Than Churchill, Truman, and LBJ.”
There are numerous posts attacking gay people and “the Moral Decay of the West,” as one video is labeled, while praising Russia’s legal and cultural restrictions on the gay community in that country. The site also posts essays denigrating Black people.
Bausman has praised the work of Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who
has joked about the Holocaust and implied the Nazi atrocities in World War II were faked. Russia Insider also denigrates the U.S. and its popular culture, comparing it in negative terms with Russian culture.
Olga Lautman, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., and an expert on Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns, said Bausman was a familiar feature in Russian-language media.
“He’s been pushing Kremlin talking points for years. And very conspiratorial. He taps into conspiracy theories, and the darker aspects of U.S., the fringe groups, the dangerous ones. And he’s one of many, causing division in America,” said Lautman, who produces a regular podcast on Russia called Kremlin File. “It’s poisonous.”