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The US government says “Russian influence actors” are behind a viral video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant illegally voting for Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
Intelligence agencies on Friday said the clip, claiming to be filmed in the swing state of Georgia, was “part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans”, and was consistent with Russian groups’ “prior activities”.
They said Russian actors had “also manufactured a video falsely accusing an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a US entertainer”, and cautioned Moscow planned to release more such content in the final days of the election campaign.
The warning comes as officials across the country brace for a stream of misinformation surrounding the election, coming from within the US but also from foreign adversaries such as Russia, Iran and China.
On Thursday Georgia’s top election official appealed to Elon Musk to remove “targeted disinformation” about voter fraud in the state from social media site X.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, was referring to the clip featuring a man seated in the back of a moving vehicle claiming he was a Haitian immigrant who had voted for vice-president Harris in Gwinnett County, north-east of Atlanta, and was planning to vote again in Fulton County. The camera then pans to a hand holding what appear to be four Georgia driving licences.
Raffensperger said the video, which has been viewed several hundred thousand times on X, was “obviously fake”. He added the post was probably “a production of Russian troll farms”.
“We ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down,” he added.
Election experts warn foreign disinformation could proliferate in particular on Musk’s X after the billionaire entrepreneur dramatically cut the platform’s moderation teams as part of his pledge to allow for greater freedom of speech.
X on Friday said it had found the videos violated internal policies and added it was “taking action against the posts”.
Cyber experts have found Russia, Iran and China have been stepping up their influence operations going into the vote.
Last Friday, US intelligence agencies alleged Russian actors were behind another video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania. That video also went viral on X.
Meanwhile, Microsoft last week said it had found videos enhanced by artificial intelligence containing disinformation about Harris that came from a Kremlin-aligned troll farm it calls ‘Storm-1516’, as well as Russian disinformation about Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which had gained more than 5mn views on X in the first 24 hours.
Iran has focused on both hacking and influence operations, including sending stolen material from Donald Trump’s campaign to US media outlets and creating covert news sites targeting voters with disinformation.
US authorities have indicated that Iran does not want another Trump presidency because he has vowed to take a tough stance against Tehran and stand in the way of it acquiring a nuclear weapon.
More than 3.6mn people have voted in Georgia, which allows for two weeks of early voting prior to election day. Recent polls have given Trump a slender lead in the swing state but still within the margin of error.
Raffensperger, a Republican who drew national attention for refusing Trump’s demand to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the state’s election result in 2020, has sought over the past few months to convince voters in the state that its polls are secure amid an influx of election deniers at various levels of the local administration.
He has also countered claims from Trump’s allies that Georgia’s voter rolls contain a significant number of non-citizens. Raffensperger’s office this month reported it had identified just 20 non-citizens out of 8.2mn registered voters in the state.
Musk has repeatedly used his platform on X to claim Democrats have been “importing” immigrants to vote for them. This month, the billionaire featured a post from his America Pac group that purported to show a 401 per cent increase in Georgia’s migrant population. “Voter importation at an unprecedented scale!” he claimed.
Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington