> I've no problems believing that Marsalek is a Russian agent, but Bellingcat is of course funded by the National Endowment for Democracy ...

One of the most consistently useful lessons I've learned online is that you can spot uninformed low-trust dismissals because they're always based on how someone is "funded" by someone else or advise "following the money" but their theory of how this works either doesn't exist or is obviously wrong.

Very common in /r/science for instance. They won't read a paper or check if it's preregistered etc. but they will complain if it was sponsored by someone at all associated with the topic of the paper.