NYT Report: India-Based Accounts Paid to Spread Undisclosed Haley Stevens Videos in Michigan Senate Primary; Hirer Won't Name Client

The New York Times reported that people paid to circulate street-interview videos promoting Democrat Haley Stevens ahead of Michigan’s US Senate primary were mostly based in India, not Michigan. At least 36 such videos appeared on X, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and none of the posts disclosed that anyone had paid for them. Posters were paid $1 to $5 for each thousand views. Antibot4navalny traced 28 X accounts that together drew more than 7 million views, and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub found more accounts on Meta’s platforms, some earlier linked to Chinese bot networks. The posters were hired through Lumina Clippers, registered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and run by Rhys McKay, who would not name the client or the contract’s value, citing confidentiality. The reporting does not identify who funded the video campaign, and it does not establish that the Stevens campaign did.

Context: El-Sayed won the August 4 primary by a narrower margin than polls had predicted, and about USD 60 million of outside spending backed Stevens, per AdImpact. It sits beside the Bloomberg review of the Matryoshka network and the America Next influencer-marketing spending as part of the 2026 record of undisclosed and inauthentic paid reach in the midterms. The sources are syndications of the NYT story; the original was not fetched.