The Curious Case of Omnicom’s Ketchum, Clinton and the Kremlin
The Biden DOJ left Omnicom's name out of its 2023 Durham Report on Hillary Clinton's Russia-collusion hijinks. Now we know why.
It appears Bill and Hillary Clinton are back in the news this week… this time, no-showing in Washington, D.C., in the face of a Congressional subpoena by the House Oversight Committee.
My own congressman — Rep. Tim Burchett — had something to say about that.
And so do I, given some very interesting PR industry history — replete with Russian subplot — that I think it’s time to share about the Hillary Clinton PR / media apparatus, dating back to Campaign 2016… and even prior.
In pondering Hillary Clinton, the Kremlin, and the May 2023 Biden DOJ Durham Report – as one does – I’m reminded of that famous Robert De Niro bar scene[1] from the Martin Scorsese mob film, “Goodfellas.”
After his gang of thugs land their windfall from the Lufthansa heist, De Niro’s character, “Jimmy,” berates his crew for showing up at their favorite nightclub, flaunting new, ill-gotten wealth – in blatant view of potential FBI surveillance – with wives sporting new fur coats, diamond rings and pink Cadillacs.
If you view the clip below, please pardon the expletives (it is a Scorsese mob classic, after all!):
The moral of this immorality: timing is everything.
As per The “Jimmy” Rule, you risk getting “pinched” by the Feds when you fail to cover your tracks by being so quick (and freakin’ obvious) in benefitting from documented connections to your own prior corruption.
It’s a pretty easy concept to gather, when you think about it.
But even as mafia-like as some of the most prominent and well-resourced players in the PR industry sometimes behave, it’s stunning how penny-wise and pound-foolish these same folks can be, when it comes to pointing fingers at others while simultaneously pawing around for more goodies from the cookie jar.
Enter stage left:
The international advertising agency / public relations firm mega-conglomerate Omnicom[2] completed its historic, $13.5 billion acquisition[3] of Interpublic Group (IPG)[4] in recent months[5].
The new Omnicom stands as the largest and most powerful ad / PR holding company in the world[6].
It also operates under a new, 10-year antitrust compliance order from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)[7] – and for good reason: allegedly operating within an ultra-partisan, anti-conservative media-buying “cartel.”
As such, it’s past time for American legislators, voters and investors to learn the truth of why the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) omitted Omnicom entirely from any mention in its Durham Report[8] on “Russia collusion” in May 2023, which highlighted Clinton campaign ethics violations and wrongdoing.
This Durham Report omission of Omnicom continues to mislead the nation and the world, while holding no one at Omnicom agencies accountable for long-running pro-Russia concealments, profiteering, and anti-America chicanery.
Including the chicanery involving Secretary Clinton.
While Omnicom-owned business interests in particular have raked in the cash from Russian Federation government client(s) — then proceeded to donate generously to Democrat presidential and other candidates, whom they’ve endorsed publicly — these clowns have finger-pointed at President Donald Trump specifically and Republicans in general, as if they’re the ones with a “Russia collusion” patriotism problem.
The legal, media, and social media records document opposite facts.
For starters, the Durham Report documented that the Omnicom-owned PR firm, Ketchum, played an alarming role in Hillary Clinton’s false Russia “collusion” accusations targeting President Trump[9] around the time that Election 2016 was wrapping up… with Hillary Clinton widely, overwhelmingly, and incorrectly predicted the winner.
Despite the enormity of that alarming role, Ketchum[10] was only mentioned eight times by name in the DOJ’s Durham Report, in striking understatement to the very real, public harm a Ketchum past executive + sub-contractor apparently inflicted to our democratic (little “d”) processes, as part of the scandal, as documented in the Report.
By contrast, Charles Dolan[13] (a.k.a “Chuck” or “Chas”) – a former Ketchum senior executive and later subcontractor[14] for Ketchum’s Russian Federation PR account[15] during those years[16] – was mentioned in the Durham Report a whopping 472 times (including DOJ source footnotes).
Four hundred and seventy-two times.
Ketchum’s near-decade engagement (2006-2015) as Vladimir Putin’s PR agency of record,[11] as documented in DOJ foreign-agent filings over those years, overlapped a large chunk of the Obama Administration timeline, which also very much included Secretary Clinton’s infamous, cringeworthy “Russia reset button” PR disaster[12] at the U.S. State Department.
Among Ketchum’s own dubious PR “accomplishments”:
Scoring the 2007 “Person of the Year” feature for Putin, on the then-coveted cover of TIME magazine…
Pertaining to the Steele Dossier, both Ketchum and Mr. Dolan also were cited by name in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Crossfire Hurricane” public-facing redacted binder[17].
Mr. Dolan’s direct work for Ketchum’s PR-contracted Russian interests[18] ran concurrently to his self-admitted role(s) as a decades-long[19] Clinton campaign operative[20] and “volunteer.”
This conflict-riddled duality – of Mr. Dolan’s Ketchum employment and his House of Clinton partisan loyalties / volunteerism – begs the question of how much Mr. Dolan may have been co-advising Secretary Clinton in a lockstep, grossly unethical crossing-of-the-streams with his concurrent for-profit Ketchum flacking for the Putin regime.
Either way, the Durham Report definitively debunked the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign’s basket of deplorable disinformation, aimed at defaming President Trump.
Notably, the report exposed Mr. Dolan’s Clinton campaign links to Steele Dossier mythology[21], like the salacious and depraved urination-video rumor[22], falsely alleging videotaped goings-on, so to speak, in a Moscow hotel room.
However, even with 472 mentions of Omnicom’s / Ketchum’s Mr. Dolan and the mention of Ketchum itself eight times, the 306-page Durham Report avoided mentioning Ketchum parent company Omnicom entirely.
Not even once.
This combo of Biden DOJ Ketchum-soft-pedal + Omnicom-omission deserves long-overdue scrutiny, given how much Omnicom (and Democrats) directly co-benefited as a result, so soon thereafter. (“Jimmy” would not approve!)
The May 2023 Durham Report Omnicom omission helped Omnicom retain its media power and market position relatively scandal-free, in 2023-24 ramp-up not only 1) to Omnicom’s brokered and highly lucrative role / position within the Election 2024 advertising media-buying season but also 2) to Omnicom’s multi-billion-dollar acquisition of IPG, which was initially announced in December 2024 and then completed in late 2025… only a few months ago.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats got away scot-free from accountability that never arrived, as per usual.
For the record, in November 2016, Omnicom’s Ketchum helped lead the PR industry’s crowded pro-Clinton camp of leftist PR agency suck-ups.
A PRWeek trade publication round-up published on the very day of the U.S. Election — Nov. 8, 2016 — rendered nothing short of a 100% pro-Clinton prediction panel of PR agency heads (“They’re with her: PR execs predict a resounding Clinton victory”[23]).
PRWeek included then-Ketchum CEO Rob Flaherty in the group gush-fest, stating: “…Clinton will capture at least 310 electoral votes.”
No mention of Ketchum’s Russia operative (Mr. Dolan) or Mr. Dolan’s concurrent Steele Dossier antics were disclosed by Mr. Flaherty in his ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton:
For his part, a prominent prior Ketchum Europe CEO and then-Omnicom President of “Growth and Development International,” David Gallagher (a London-based U.S. expat and 2014 winner of PRSA’s “Atlas Award”), chimed in on Twitter / X himself (@tbonegallagher), on October 31, 2016, claiming he was “quite emotional” over the “FBI sitting on ‘explosive’ information regarding Donald Trump and Russia” — per a news article he hyperlinked to in his tweet.
This smoking-gun tweet — among countless others — may stand as Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s Violation #1 of the Goodfellas “Jimmy” Rule.
After all, @tbonegallagher opted not to mention in his little tweet his own role overseeing Ketchum’s prior direct contract with Vladimir Putin’s government. Nor did he mention such in his numerous other posts later, claiming #TrumpRussia / “collusion” and similar nonsense.
What he did mention, curiously, was his great degree of personal angst over the notion of his being apprehended by a Trump Administration U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI):
Some 22 months after the May 2023 Durham Report, PRWeek celebrated another headline on March 5, 2025, “Omnicom-IPG deal gains support,”[24] spotlighting that Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG would be endorsed[25] by both Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC, and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS).
PRWeek beamed that ISS and Glass Lewis are “widely considered to be the two most important advisory groups for U.S. investors.”
Last month, both proxy firms were separately called out in President Trump’s December 11, 2025, Executive Order, “Protecting American Investors from Foreign-Owned and Politically Motivated Proxy Advisors.”[26]
Those endorsements for the Omnicom / IPG deal now seem especially relevant, in the category of “follow the money” and how / if Russia has been leveraging — or indeed FUNDING — Omnicom’s historically rabid pro-DEI and pro-ESG orthodoxies for years now.
Omnicom’s now-former “Chief DEI Officer” really let loose on precisely how the PR / DEI money-making sausage is made from stoking societal divisiveness, in this PRSA-funded / Omnicom-sponsored industry chat, a few years ago:
Apart from helping Russia and other rogue states interject chaos in democratic societies, stoking divisiveness sells in the PR business. Cynical but true.
PR agencies that help sow and stir up discord also often hope to cash in on the back end, with crisis-comms related business and other billable hour and monthly retainer fix-its.
It’s almost akin to an arsonist setting fires and then rushing to the scene to be hailed a hero as a volunteer firefighter… only there is no volunteerism going on here.
No, sir.
It’s big bucks. And, it’s big power.
Relative to the Durham Report’s findings (and omissions) in 2023, following the PR industry’s choreographed cheers and collective herkies for Hillary Clinton in 2016 (only to have their balls spiked on the last play by Team Trump), neither Ketchum nor Omnicom were ever called out in any meaningful way within the PR industry, for Ketchum’s documented role(s) / associations in Candidate Clinton’s Trump-Russia “collusion” hoax ethics scandal royale.
PR industry media, PR trade associations, PR academia, and the customarily vocal PR practitioner community: all mum on the subject.
Why?…
Most industry folks knew nothing of the Durham Report’s mentions of Ketchum, or much about the Durham Report itself, thanks in large part to tight-lipped PR trade press, seemingly paid “sponsorship” dollars that widely promote + protect Omnicom interests as the industry’s most deep-pocketed agenda-setter.
And it’s not just what Omnicom pays outright in advertising and sponsorship dollars to media (including to the PR trade press).
It’s what they have the power, leverage, and pocketbook to threaten (even if wordlessly implied) not to pay in the future. It’s quite a strong-armed, dark-arts, evergreen position for Omnicom, atop its throne over a universal kingdom of high-powered giants of paid-media advertising agencies and digital media firms.
It’s power played and power assured.
According to our friends at ChatGPT, when I recently asked about Omnicom using PR trade media “sponsorships” as veiled pay-for-play to leverage PR trade press publications’ news / editorial coverage specifically, here’s what I got back (which Omnicom is free to counter / refute, if they think they have the horses for it, particularly with the FTC):
Consequently, many of us in the PR industry never knew in real time just how much the May 2023 Durham Report documented Ketchum’s connections to Secretary Clinton’s 2016 “Russia Collusion” campaign hijinks.
The PR trade press simply didn’t cover it.
Neither did many in mainstream media. We certainly didn’t see the words “Ketchum PR” in Durham Report headlines from media like The Washington Post or The New York Times.
In fact, I’m sure my column here — in January 2026 — will come as “breaking news” for many of my PR colleagues worldwide.
That collective “thud” you hear at some point will probably be over 1 million PR industry practitioners worldwide falling out of their chairs, just as I did throughout last year on connecting the dots to all this stuff.
I, for one, never realized Ketchum was even cited in the Durham Report, until last spring (2025), when I stumbled upon it during an unrelated online keyword search, for some research I was doing on a different topic.
To wit, I practically fell out of my chair reading the Durham Report the first time, when I later realized that multiple colleagues whom I directly know and have interacted with myself in the New York- and London-centric PR association world had their own fingerprints all over Omnicom’s / Ketchum’s Russia dealings – including those directly pertaining to Durham Report findings and/or Mr. Dolan.
At first, my heart sank.
For example, I had worked directly with Ray Kotcher — then recently retired CEO of Ketchum — on a PRSA committee in 2016-17.
Then, my heart broke…
Alongside the Durham Report’s Charles Dolan (who I had never heard of previously), I realized I knew of numerous others in addition to Ray Kotcher, who clearly were all implicated with Ketchum’s Russian Federation work, as I discovered incrementally.
And now, this “PR” work was completely implicated in horrific, major world events, from Clinton’s misconduct documented in the Durham Report (which largely derailed President Trump’s first term in office) to Putin’s ramp-up to the invasion of Ukraine (among other things).
Most heart-breaking for me:
In my now-embarrassing-to-admit naïveté, I had never realized — back over a dizzying number of prior years — that certain U.S. citizens from Ketchum whom I personally knew and had worked with on various PR association industry projects and advisory groups — on both sides of the Atlantic — had been Vladimir Putin’s PR people, for crying out loud.
And what’s more, these people (and their teams) had been manipulating (in my view) the PR industry associations in New York and London both, as veiled front groups.
The apparent goal: collect industry awards and honors and grandstanding opportunities to portray themselves as the heroes of the industry, while at the same time, profiting into the mega-millions from exceptionally complex and widely concealed offshore Russia dealings.
By the time I realized in 2025 the full interconnections here with Ketchum personnel who had been on the Vladimir Putin PR payroll, I also realized that over numerous past years, I myself had been personally hand-selected / operationalized / co-opted by Ketchum / Omnicom to serve on both PRSA (U.S.) and PRCA (U.K.) committees / councils.
While the work of these committees and councils was undertaken honestly and in good faith by many non-Omnicom-affiliated colleagues who served on them (and I count myself among them), it now seems clear that these efforts intentionally and clandestinely served as whitewash endeavors for these Omnicom-affiliated personnel, to help them appear ethical, upstanding, and God’s gift to good practice in the PR industry, in the concurrent wake of their Russia profiteering.
My mere heartbreak then downshifted into nausea, realizing how I got played:
Naturally, in the light of these revelations, I feel indignant… being among the throngs of Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s Village of Useful Idiots, similarly used and taken advantage of as Omnicom’s PR “ethics” props.
Clearly, though, “It Takes a Village” — and who better to model that message of PR puppetry, than the Doyenne of Duplicity herself.
Abusing the trust of innocent / unknowing people by using them in political stagecraft comes quite naturally to some notable evil-doers.
So. Switching gears back to not-so-minor issues, like U.S. national security interests and now-abundantly-documented antitrust violation concerns:
Whether the Biden DOJ’s Durham Report omission of Omnicom’s name was Mr. Durham’s own “independent counsel” decision (doubtful), or that of his boss (then-Attorney General Merrick Garland[27]), or, further up the 2023 White House chain of command to President Biden’s autopen[28], a wide range of additional Durham Report omissions tied to Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s for-profit entanglements in Moscow should have been exposed to the U.S. Congress and the American voter, years ago.
I certainly wish I had recognized all these connections earlier than 2025, had they not been purposely concealed or at least egregiously overlooked by certain parties, not the least of whom include far too many in the journalism profession.
For example, as I’ve now researched for myself, the Durham Report omitted mention of Omnicom’s vast, for-profit matrix of pro-Russia advocacy interests across its full portfolio of PR / ad agency properties.
That portfolio goes WAYYYYYYYYYY beyond Ketchum alone, as my research has uncovered.
In fact, my research from 2025 still has me black-and-blue, from falling out of my chair on so many subsequent occasions at all of these additional Omnicom-Russia revelations. (My apologies to PRSA and PRCA industry colleagues for whom this stuff is somehow old news or otherwise a total yawner):
- The Omnicom-owned Maslansky + Partners[29]PR firm[30], also based in New York. According to DOJ foreign-agent filings by Ketchum[31], Maslansky[32] served as a strategic-messaging[33] specialist subcontractor[34] to help Ketchum[35] help Vladimir Putin hype himself[36] and Russia convincingly as purported good citizens of the world, in the early 2010s[37].
- The Omnicom-owned[38] “Ketchum Maslov”[39] Moscow-based PR firm acquisition in 2010 by Ketchum. This Omnicom sister firm for Ketchum in Russia enabled the New York-based Ketchum[40] to hand off all kinds of dealings[41] while keeping profits under Omnicom’s holdings, once it became abundantly inconvenient for Ketchum’s operations on U.S. terra firma to register those pesky, publicly discoverable foreign-agent disclosures with the DOJ.
- Other Omnicom-owned PR / digital outfits doing business in / for Russia, such as the former FleishmanHillard Vanguard (FHV)[42] in Moscow (a namesake arm of Omnicom’s St. Louis-based Fleishman Hillard[43]). A key FHV executive[44] and Russian national[45] — with whom I myself unwittingly interacted on two January 2022 PR association conference calls without knowledge of her larger[46] affiliations[47] – helped lead[48] the Association of Consulting Companies in the Field of Public Relations (AKOS). I later learned that AKOS is an entirely separate, Russia-based[49] PR association (“cartel”?) of firms[50] doing business in and / or for[51] Russia. It apparently included Omnicom’s Ketchum and FleishmanHillard Vanguard but also big competitor firms, like Grayling[52], whose global CEO chaired the board of the London-based PRCA in 2022-23.
- The Omnicom-owned GPlus[53], a Ketchum subcontractor[54] in Europe[55]. GPlus began handling Ketchum’s post-launch “ThinkRussia” website[56] and @ThinkRussia[57] Twitter (later X) handle[58] set up for pro-Putin propaganda, as noted in Ketchum’s Russian Federation foreign-agent filings with the DOJ. (The website search results were clearly later manipulated to claim Ketchum’s ThinkRussia.com for its client was an “adversarial” website to Russian government interests — a blatant lie.)
- Ketchum’s separate Russian Federation Gazprom PR account subcontractor for U.S. lobbying, law firm Venable, LLP[59]. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, was a law partner of Venable, LLP[60], starting in 2015. I myself had direct confrontations[61] with Venable, LLP, from 2020 forward, in their curiously coincidental role as legal counsel of record to the U.S.-based PR trade association, PRSA[62], which apparently has been a lawyer / client relationship since 2014. (Neither Venable nor PRSA has ever disclosed to PRSA’s membership Venable’s conflicted history as a Ketchum subcontractor to Russian government interests).
Ketchum’s U.S. Department of Justice Foreign-Agent Filing (2014):
In 2015[63], Ketchum pinky-promised[64] the PR industry that it essentially[65] was done working for Putin’s government, according to a variety of PR industry trade media reports, as well as featured content in The Moscow Times:
But not so fast!
A 2015 Adweek trade publication report on March 12, 2015, by crackerjack reporter (now employed by The Wall Street Journal), Patrick Coffee, shouted this headline to God and everybody:
“Ketchum (Sort of, Not Really) Ends Its Relationship with Vladimir Putin.”[66]
Mr. Coffee’s insightful report documented that the “not really” part was that Omnicom merely diverted in 2015 Ketchum’s Putin contract, or at least part of it, to yet another Omnicom-owned, offshore agency (GPlus, of @thinkrussia fame).
Here’s what our friends at the googles had to say, when I merely plugged in the search term “Ketchum Maslov PR Russia Work”:
Meanwhile, Ketchum continued full steam ahead[67], from 2015 forward, with its “Ketchum Maslov”[68] operations in Moscow[69], as documented by Ketchum’s own mothership X handle in August 2016 — just months before U.S. Election 2016 — lauding the super-wholesome Ketchum Maslov employee summer picnic / hoedown in Moscow, replete with babies and haybales:
The Ketchum Maslov crew (among other Omnicom firms like Fleishman Hillard / Moscow-based FleishmanHillard Vanguard) continued from 2015 forward with collecting high-profile industry awards[70] from the pay-for-play trade press[71] and PRSA[72], among others.
It should be noted that Google Russia was also among Ketchum’s clients.
When I asked the googles about Ketchum’s client work for both the Russian Federation and Google Russia, here is what Google had to say for itself:
The Question: “Has Google Russia manipulated search results on Vladimir Putin dealings, and how was Ketchum PR involved, since Google Russia was also a Ketchum PR ‘client’?”
When I clicked on the above “Dive deeper in AI Mode,” here’s what else got spat out:
Of course, it’s more than a smidge fascinating to read (above, last paragraph) “…no information in the search results to confirm that Google Russia was a ‘client’ of Ketchum PR…”, when we have postings from the X archive showing Ketchum receiving precisely such awards for Google Russia:
When I re-jiggered the search to ask straight-up, “Was Google in any way a Ketchum PR client ever?” this is what we see:
Fun times:
Ketchum claimed to divest from Moscow in March 2022[73], or so the industry was (again) told[74], after Putin’s hostile, not-so-good-citizen-of-the-world invasion that year of Ukraine.
My personally revelatory screenshots in 2025 document that from 2016 forward, certain high-profile, longtime Omnicom / Ketchum[75] officials in New York[76] and London[77] profusely leveraged[78] their chatty[79], public-facing social media followings, to stoke ongoing Trump-Russia “collusion”[80] theories[81] masquerading as fact[82], including post-Durham Report[83].
Ketchum Senior Counsel John Paluszek is one such individual.
For years, he has operated something of a shadow platform on behalf of Ketchum, called “Business In Society,” with its own social media assets that Mr. Paluszek alone appears to control.
Another social media handle is the one already mentioned in this post.
As an American, I’m also alarmed by the potential of current or former Ketchum / Omnicom executives manipulating Biden / Obama Administration-era legacy employees / officials at the FBI, past or present.
Why?
Because …
One[84] powerful former[85] Omnicom executive[86] with whom I’ve dealt personally – a London-based U.S. expatriate[87] who makes his own anti-Trump hostilities[88] very public[89] – openly bragged[90] on X in 2018 about his having “had the good fortune over the years to become friends[91] with several FBI officials”[92].
He apparently was also making margaritas for the FBI in 2014, during his Russian-contracting heyday (if I’m reading his own post correctly — with photo evidence).
He also tweeted to the previously indicted former FBI Director James Comey in 2018, as if he knew the disgraced Mr. Comey personally[93].
In addition, he has openly[94] prattled[95] in two-way tweet dialogues with Ketchum’s / the Durham Report’s / FBI “Crossfire Hurricane”‘s own Charles Dolan himself (X handle[96] @cathal1066)[97], which seems to make clear that the two know each other.
“Jimmy” from “Goodfellas” should give this guy a talking to, about blowing his own cover.
Particularly indicting, we’ve witnessed textbook gaslighting of Ketchum / Omnicom folk pointing fingers of Russia “collusion” back at President Trump, after Ketchum was well-known to have been on the payroll for years from the Russian Federation, not to mention PR trade media’s own (undisclosed?) Omnicom revenues / potential kickbacks to prime the post-2016 anti-Trump propaganda pump and keep it flowing.
This PR industry podcast from 2017 seems to be a prime example of an Omnicom-friendly softball interview, with pre-planned questions scripted to point pro-Russia accusations at President Trump while dodging any real accountability for Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s own pro-Putin shilling:
Countless Omnicom-affiliated executives suckled from the billable-hour breast of Mother Russia to the tune of millions in their own pockets (at least the mega-millions we know about from the DOJ filings).
Yet their audacity in blaming Trump as a Russia-colluder is nothing short of stunning.
Apparently, this fact is more openly known, acknowledged and even joked about in U.K. PR industry circles than it has been known here in the States:
Omnicom also scored partisan brownie points while engaged in all this duplicity from the Clinton / Obama / Biden / Harris elite, judging by the comically lop-sided share of multi-decade political contributions faithfully deposited by Omnicom with the Democrats, as per OpenSecrets.org as well as DOJ foreign-agent filings.
Omnicom agencies also hold an array of lucrative federal government contracts, according to the General Services Administration, despite their ongoing DEI dogma and rhetoric[98] that run afoul of President Trump’s January 2025 Executive Order on DEI.
Omnicom’s gaslighting is grossly akin to how Putin points fingers at Ukraine and the West for “aggression,” while Russia lobs indiscriminate bombs into Downtown Kyiv’s residential apartment buildings, killing innocent civilians.
For their part, neither the Biden DOJ nor most global news media bothered to give a dumpster-dive to Omnicom’s international properties’ separate, extensive online filings with the British Government’s U.K. Companies House[99] – including Omnicom “investment” groups, monikered[100] under names[101] like “DAS UK INVESTMENTS LIMITED.”[102]
Take a gander at these British documents[103] online, and you’ll get an eye-full of what else hasn’t been widely reported for years by certain curiously uncurious news media and federal deep-staters, writ large.
To that observation – minus the rare Patrick Coffees of U.S. Journalism – where have the global legacy news media been all these years, in tracking and exposing Omnicom / Russia for-profit “PR” to advance Putin’s obscenely well-funded global propaganda game, in documented political cahoots with the U.S. partisan left?
The answer: largely asleep at the wheel – and being paid handsomely for it. Therein lies the rub:
At now a $25 billion[104] market cap, Omnicom’s pre-merger Omnicom Media Group division alone reported corporate, government, and NGO client gross billings of some $45.6 billion[105], in 2024. A vast share of those dollars were commissionable pass-throughs, invested in Omnicom’s hand-selected, external advertising media / digital buys, for said clients.
News media owners – particularly the publicly traded ones – understandably sweat bullets over whether tranches of Omnicom-controlled advertising budgets might get yanked away from them, at media’s revenue peril, if any Omnicom-disapproved strand of news-editorial content is allowed oxygen on their pages, airwaves or platforms.
That’s serious corporate power wielded by Omnicom over so-called “independent” journalistic newsrooms – easily abused, undetected.
The good news: the Trump FTC is on to them[106].
Post-merger, Omnicom now operates under an FTC compliance order[107], due to highly credible Congressional allegations[108] in late 2024 that Omnicom participated in a global, anti-conservative media-buying “cartel.”[109]
You know. Sort of like the mafia. “Jimmy’s” folk!
The alleged cartel operated from 2019-2024 under the laughably misleading industry-association front group moniker, the “Global Alliance for Responsible Media” (GARM)[110]. In truth, there was nothing “responsible” or arguably even legal about GARM, as per U.S. antitrust law[111].
Hastily disbanded[112] in 2024, GARM[113] was documented by Congress[114] to have punished[115] (withheld ad dollars from) perennial ratings winners like conservative-leaning FOX News[116] and online-traffic behemoths like Elon Musk’s X social media platform. According to a congressional report, GARM lavished revenue favor instead on weaker (but pro-Democrat) media disciples of long-debunked Trump-Russia “collusion,” lies, and non-existent videotape – irrespective of what ad strategies actually made business sense for clients’ goals.
In sum, the Durham Report made some valuable revelations but stopped far short of telling the whole truth about Omnicom’s multi-pronged pro-Russia flacking, thanks to appearances of politically motivated self-censorship at the Biden DOJ.
As a result, Omnicom benefited, the Democrats continue benefiting, Mr. Trump’s entire first term was largely hijacked, and the public remains in the dark about what’s really going on here.
It’s time for disclosure and accountability, due to irreversible harms to U.S. and global democracy already inflicted.
In December 2025, I registered a report to the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (yes, it’s really called that), pertaining to manipulations of PR trade associations:
American voters are now entitled to full transparency of Omnicom’s complex, pro-Russia web[117] of unethical and undisclosed “PR”[118] and pay-for-play. Omnicom’s global history here must be properly investigated, exposed, and subjected to DOJ antitrust-compliance review and investor scrutiny, as merited.
Time for a call to my Congressman:
With a 35-year PR industry career based in Tennessee, Mary Beth West (X: @marybethwest) co-chaired a London-based PR trade association’s Global Ethics Council from 2020-2022, after receiving an e-mailed invitation to do so in 2020, labeled “An offer you can’t refuse,” written by a top London-based Omnicom / former Ketchum executive.
Later, she incrementally discovered from 2022-25 massive Omnicom-related issues tied to Russia, which have yet to be investigated by governments in the U.S. or U.K., or, reported by news media anywhere. Her blog at marybethwest.com documents her career journey of facing PR industry whistleblower retaliation, in the face of partisan industry trade associations commandeered as conglomerates’ front groups.
[1] https://youtu.be/FVvvkDSXj_I?si=YIeOoCaDvwPL868q
[2] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/omc
[3] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/omnicom-completes-acquisition-of-interpublic-forming-the-worlds-leading-marketing-and-sales-company-built-for-intelligent-growth-in-the-next-era-302627141.html
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/251-0049-omnicom-groupthe-interpublic-group-co
[5] https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/omnicoms-13-billion-acquisition-of-interpublic-cleared-by-u-k-watchdog-8c4791fe?mod=Searchresults&pos=2&page=1
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