FBI links video falsely depicting Georgia voter fraud to ‘Russian influencers’

Eric Tucker and Ali Swenson
| Associated Press

Washington — A video purporting to show voter fraud in Georgia is fake and the work of “Russian influence actors,” U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, warning that foreign efforts to undermine confidence in the integrity of next week’s election may persist long after what votes were cast. cast.

The announcement that the video was fake represented an effort by the FBI and other federal agencies, four days before Tuesday’s election, to combat foreign disinformation by calling it in rather than letting it spread unchecked for days. It follows a similar statement last week that also attributed a widely circulated video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Donald Trump destroyed in Pennsylvania to Russian actors.

The 20-second video, which began circulating on social media platform X Thursday afternoon, shows someone who describes himself as a Haitian immigrant talking about how he plans to vote multiple times in two counties in Georgia for vice president Kamala Harris.

He displays several alleged Georgia IDs with different names and addresses. An Associated Press review of the information on two of the IDs confirms that they do not match any registered voters in Gwinnett or Fulton counties, the two counties he mentioned.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said late Thursday that the video was “obviously fake” and likely the product of Russian trolls “trying to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election.”

Intelligence officials echoed that finding on Friday, saying the video was made by “Russian influencers” and was part of Moscow’s “broader effort to raise baseless questions about the integrity of the US election and fuel divisions among Americans.”

The intelligence community expects Russia, in the days leading up to the election and in the weeks and months ahead, “to create and release additional media content aimed at undermining confidence in the integrity of the election and dividing the American people,” the joint statement said of the FBI. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The post that originally popularized the video was no longer available Friday morning, but copycat versions of the video were still widely shared with false claims that it showed election fraud.

The video is similar in style and method of distribution to other videos created by Storm-1516, also known as CopyCop, a known Russian disinformation network that created several fake videos in this election, according to Darren Linvill, co-director Mediate. Forensics Hub at Clemson University, which investigated the group.

Also Friday, the agencies attributed to Russia a separately fabricated video falsely accusing “an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking bribes from an American entertainer.” They did not elaborate.