Day: November 1, 2024

A video purporting to show recently arrived Haitian immigrants illegally voting in Georgia for Kamala Harris was produced by a Russian government-backed disinformation unit, according to US authorities. Three agencies—the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—said in a joint news release Friday that the video, which circulated widely on Twitter/X, was manufactured by “Russian influence actors.” The same group, they wrote, was also behind “a video falsely accusing an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a U.S. entertainer.”  

Though the agencies didn’t specifically name a particular source for the videos, disinformation experts, including Darren Linvill of Clemson University, pointed out that the voting video strongly resembles earlier ones produced by Storm-1516, a Russian government-backed propaganda unit that has been targeting the Harris-Walz campaign for months. In the voting video, a man declares that he and others emigrated from Haiti, were given citizenship, and are now driving around to multiple counties to cast ballots for Harris. “Yesterday, we voted in Gwinnett County, and today we’re voting in Fulton County,” he says. “We have all our documents, driver’s license. We invite all Haitians to come to America and bring families.” He also displays four different drivers licenses with four different signatures.

The agencies didn’t not identify the “U.S. entertainer” named in the faked video, but a site Linvill says is run by Storm-1516 recently posted footage depicting someone with a blurred face alleging that Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were bribed by Sean “Diddy” Combs for “tipping him off” ahead of a raid on his homes this spring.

The group is also believed to be behind a fake video from earlier this month which purported to show mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania. It is also believed to have helped spread false sexual abuse claims against Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. (Those claims were initially promulgated in part by a U.S.-based person, a Twitter account calling himself Black Insurrectionist, who the Associated Press revealed last week is a white upstate New York man named Jason G. Palmer.) 

Even before the U.S. intelligence agencies issued their statement, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had already called on X and other social media sites to take the video down, saying it was clearly part of a disinformation campaign while suggesting Russian involvement. “We have discussed this with State and Federal authorities,” he wrote on X. “This is obviously fake, and likely it is a production of Russian troll farms. As Americans we can’t let our enemies use lies to divide us and undermine faith in our institutions—or each other.” 

One of the Twitter users whose post containing the video was widely shared goes by “AlphaFox78,” a verified Twitter user who pays to use the service, and whose posts and replies are therefore boosted in visibility by the site. While AlphaFox78’s post has been deleted, screenshots of the video are still spreading widely on X. 

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans,” the intelligence agencies wrote. “In the lead up to election day and in the weeks and months after, the IC expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”

The latest alleged foreign influence efforts echo domestic disinformation about migrants that abounded throughout this campaign season. A key element of GOP-allied efforts to generate distrust ahead of another Trump possible loss has been to gin up unsubstantiated concerns about non-citizen voting. And in September, both Donald Trump and JD Vance repeated racist lies about Haitian people in Ohio eating household pets.