Former Sputnik employee reveals how the Kremlin-backed site became 'part of the right-wing media ecosystem'

In an interview with MSNBC's Ari Melber, Andrew Feinberg, a former White House correspondent for the Russian-backed Sputnik News service, explained how his former employer infiltrated American right-wing news.

"Many of the most popular articles about things like Wikileaks and Pizzagateand other conspiracy theories were prominently featured on the Sputnik website," Feinberg told Melber.

Those stories were then picked up by right-wing outlets like Infowars, Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit, he continued.

"Sputnik functions as part of this right-wing media ecosystem," Feinberg said. "There's a big difference between these sites run by Americans [that] employ Americans exercising their right to freedom of speech and a news site funded by a foreign government with the express purpose of not reporting the news but influencing opinion."

"When the money for that site comes from a foreign government, it's foreign propaganda," he concluded. "Not news."

Earlier this summer, Feinberg grabbed headlines when he quit the Russian news agency in a tweetstorm where he accused his former employer of turning their reporters into "propagandists." In August, Feinberg revealed that Sputnik encouraged him to push the debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that the DNC had former staffer Seth Rich murdered -- an assignment that led to him quitting.

Yesterday, news broke that Sputnik is under investigation by the FBI and that the DOJ ordered reporters from RT, another Kremlin-backed news organization, to file as foreign agents. Earlier in his interview with Melber, Feinberg said that he too had been interviewed by the FBI, and had mostly been questioned about internal processes and where he got his assignments (and money) from.

Watch Feinberg explain the connection between Sputnik and American right-wing sites below, via MSNBC.