Russian actors made fake video showing Trump mail-in ballots being destroyed, FBI says

YARDLEY, Pa. (AP) — Russian actors were behind a widely circulated video that falsely depicts mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, US officials confirmed on Friday.

The video began circulating on social media on Thursday, but was debunked within three hours by local election officials and law enforcement after members of the public reported it.

US officials said in a statement sent by the FBI that they believe the video was “fabricated and enhanced” by Russian actors. Officials said it was part of Moscow’s “broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of US elections and fuel divisions among Americans.”

The information was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The Bucks County Board of Elections identified the video as fake Thursday, saying the envelope and other materials in the video “clearly are not genuine materials belonging to or distributed by” the board.

The quick takedown of the staged video showed how election officials they learned to move quickly to counter the false narratives of the past four years, since large swathes of American voters have become distrustful of the voting process in 2020. However, detailed mimicry of ballots from a key county in this year’s presidential race has was an alarm signal. demonstrated how committed foreign actors are undermining confidence in the US voting process in the critical period before the end of the vote.

The video showed a person sorting what appeared to be ballots labeled as coming from Bucks County. The person, who was black, appeared to tear up the ballots marked for Trump and leave the ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone.

Researchers who closely study Russian foreign influence campaigns previously linked the video to a Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516 or CopyCop. The network has previously shared numerous videos with false claims about Harris and her running partner, Tim Walz.

Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which studies the group closely, said the user who popularized the Bucks County video on social platform X was an early amplifier of several other narratives on the network, including the first on which his team has ever tracked, in August 2023.

The style and look of the latest video also matches other videos on the network, Linvill said.

The video used a black actor with a foreign accent — a choice that may have been intended as a way to inflame existing divisions on American soil, according to Josephine Lukito, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin who has researched Russian disinformation. .

It’s a common strategy in fake videos originating in Russia, she said.

“Tends to amplify racism, doesn’t it?” Lukito said. “There’s already this kind of discussion about immigrants voting illegally or about immigration in general. Russian disinformation absolutely exploits that.”

After the video was debunked, the user X who popularized it deleted his original post and shared several posts from other accounts denouncing it as fake.

America PAC, a super political action committee launched by Billionaire X owner Elon Musk will support Trump in his bid for a second term, was among those who denounced the video — a stark contrast to the misinformation frequently spread on X, often spurred by Musk himself. PAC declined a request for further comment.

There were several clues that immediately indicated the Bucks County video was fabricated. For example, under Pennsylvania law, election officials it has to wait to 7 a.m. ET on Election Day before they can begin processing mail-in ballots and getting them ready to be counted.

Other suggestions included the dark green color on the left side of the outer envelopes – it’s actually more of a kelly green — and the glossiness of the inner and outer envelopes, which in reality have a matte finish. Additionally, none of the envelopes in the video had voters’ return addresses written on them.

Complaints from citizens throughout Bucks County and a call from the Yardley Borough Police Chief alerted District Attorney Jennifer Schorn that the video was circulating online. Schorn was in a pretrial conference Thursday, and when he came out, he saw the calls about the video.

“Immediately at that point, we began to investigate the video and came to our final conclusion that it was, in fact, fabricated,” she said in a phone interview Friday.

Schorn was reluctant to describe how authorities reached their conclusion, citing concerns that later fraudsters might improve their tactics. She said her office has assigned two attorneys to look into the fraud allegations and that they will be “24/7” on Election Day.

Both Republicans and Democrats in the county called the video fake and expressed concern about how it could affect the election.

“To us, this is misinformation designed to scare voters and discourage them from using mail-in ballots or vote-by-demand that use the same mail-in voting process,” the Bucks County Republican Committee said. he wrote in a statement. “We’ve seen dirty, underhanded tactics this year, from defacing signs, letters threatening Trump supporters, and now this video is trying to scare voters in Bucks County.”

Pennsylvania Sen. Steve Santarsiero, chairman of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, called the video an attempt to “call into question our mail-in voting system and ultimately the outcome of the presidential election.” in a statement.

Officials said they were encouraged by the speed with which this misinformation and other harmful falsehoods were caught during this election cycle.

“I don’t blame Americans at all for wanting to be reassured that the system can be trusted,” Schorn said. “I don’t blame because unfortunately, you know, there are criminal entities that undermine the processes. I felt peaceful yesterday. I felt it worked the way it was supposed to.”

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