FBI links video falsely depicting voter fraud in Georgia to ‘Russian influence actors’

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This article was published 01/11/2024 (320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A video purporting to depict voter fraud in Georgia is fake and the work of “Russian influence actors,” U.S. intelligence officials said Friday as they warned that foreign efforts to undermine faith in the integrity of next week’s elections may persist long after votes have been cast.

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

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

He flashes several purported Georgia IDs with different names and addresses. An Associated Press analysis of the information on two of the IDs confirms it does not match any registered voters in Gwinnett or Fulton counties, the two counties he mentioned.

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

Intelligence officials echoed that finding Friday, saying the video was manufactured by “Russian influence actors” and was part of “Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”

The intelligence community expects Russia, in the days before the election and weeks and months after, “to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans,” said the joint statement from the FBI, the 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 on Friday morning, but copycat versions of the video were still being shared widely with false claims it showed election fraud.

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

Also Friday, the agencies attributed to Russia a separate manufactured video falsely accusing “an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a U.S. entertainer.” They did not elaborate.