Before she allegedly became a Russian asset, Lauren Chen was the darling of conservative YouTube [Video]

Lauren Chen brings people together.

When the Russians were on the hunt for American influencers to produce propaganda, they hired a conservative YouTuber to scout for stars, according to the Department of Justice. And Chen, unnamed by the DOJ but identified by NBC News from business records, delivered. She connected employees of the Russian state media operation RT with unwitting right-wing content creators and their millions of followers, according to a federal indictment unsealed last week.

Chen, co-owner with her husband, producer Liam Donovan, of Tenet Media, an online collective of pro-Trump creators, negotiated a series of lucrative deals with the high-profile influencers to pump out online videos — in what turned out to be a nearly $10 million covert Russian propaganda campaign, the DOJ alleged. The DOJ did not name Tenet Media but NBC News identified the company based on its description in the indictment.

Unlike the influencers alleged to have been victims of RT and Tenet Media, …