Mother Jones; Unsplash; Wikimedia The story was produced in partnership with Important Context . Last summer, Ava Chen appeared on the right-wing news outlet Real America’s Voice to rail against the RICO charges that had just been filed against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia. The indictment “reminds me a lot of China and the CCP,” Chen told host John Fredericks , a former Trump campaign aide who now anchors one of the fledgling TV network’s marquee shows.
Chen was identified during the August 2023 segment as a spokesperson for the New Federal State of China, a MAGA-aligned group founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui—a dissident Chinese émigré who last month was convicted on RICO and fraud charges for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from his own followers. Prosecutors named the NFSC as part of Guo’s fraud scheme, arguing that the group’s ostensible opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was part of Guo’s scam. In recent years, members of the NFSC have made frequent appearances across Real America’s Voice, as well as on Fredericks’ radio show.
But what viewers didn’t know was that at the time of these interviews, a firm tied to the NFSC was paying tens of thousands of dollars to have Guo’s representatives appear on Fredericks’ radio and TV shows, as well as on another show that aired on RAV. The firm was also attempting to purchase airtime for the NFSC elsewhere on the network. These payments for appearances on Fredericks.