WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. intelligence agencies blame Russia for making a video that falsely purports to show a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in the U.S. state of Georgia, they said in a joint statement on Friday.
Georgia is one of seven battleground states expected to determine the winner in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The assessment is based on information available to the intelligence community and “prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said.
The office of Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Thursday called the video “targeted disinformation” and said it likely was produced by “Russian troll farms.”
Raffensperger appealed directly to billionaire Elon Musk, owner of X, as well as other social media companies, urging them to remove the video from their platforms.
A spokesperson for X said the content violated its policies and “we are taking action against the posts,” without elaborating. Two hours later, posts containing the video were still visible on the platform.
Analyses by NewsGuard and Common Cause, two organizations that track the spread of misinformation on social media, both identified a post by an anonymous account on X as the likely first version of the video to appear online.
While the video has circulated widely on X, Reuters also found copies of it on Facebook.
A spokesperson for Facebook parent Meta Platforms said the company was adding a message to the bottom of the video anytime it appears on the service. The label links to the agencies’ statement and says they assessed the content was “manufactured by Russian influence actors.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a question about why it chose to label rather than remove the content.
The U.S. intelligence community for months has said that Russia is conducting influence operations aimed at U.S. voters, with the goal of fanning divisive narratives and promoting support for Trump. Russia has denied the accusation.
(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, Susan Heavey, Katie Paul and Sheila Dang; Editing by Leslie Adler and Deepa Babington)
