Putin laughs after President Trump playfully tells him: ‘Don’t meddle in the election’
Years after Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election prompted investigations, President Trump asked Vladimir Putin not to do it again in 2020.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON − U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed Friday they believe Russia is behind a fake but viral video of a man claiming to be a recent Haitian immigrant saying he and a friend were voting – twice – in Georgia for Kamala Harris.
“The IC assesses that Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia,” U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies said in a statement.
In the joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said they assessed that Russian influence actors also manufactured a video falsely accusing an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a U.S. entertainer.
They did not provide details, but the site that initially shared the fake Georgia video was behind an Oct. 30 post on X falsely claiming Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff had tipped off now-indicted music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs to an Department of Homeland Security raid in March in exchange for $500,000.
Friday’s disclosure follows the ODNI’s public attribution of three other fake videos in recent weeks to Russia. They included one falsely accusing Harris of paralyzing a teenage girl in a hit and run and another falsely accusing her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, of sexual abuse.
A third fake video made and circulated by Russia purported to show pro-Harris voters illegally ripping up Trump mail-in ballots in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, an ODNI official said.
“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans,” ODNI said. It was the latest of several election updates warning Americans of what it describes as “foreign malign influence operations.”
“In the lead up to election day and in the weeks and months after,” the statement added, “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.” “IC” is an acronym for the U.S. intelligence community.
The Elon Musk factor
The Georgia video is the latest salvo in an intensifying Kremlin campaign to smear Vice President Harris and boost what intelligence officials say is Vladimir Putin’s preferred candidate, former President Donald Trump, in the waning days of the razor-close Nov. 5 election.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung didn’t comment when asked if the former president would condemn the alleged Russian effort.
The video is also the latest example of how multibillionaire Elon Musk, an aggressive Trump backer, has failed to comply with at least some government requests to take down demonstrably fake Russian disinformation on his influential social media platform, X, that could sway voters.
CISA officials first tipped off Georgia authorities about the latest video on Thursday. That prompted Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to publicly disclose the information operation on X, formerly Twitter, and to call on Musk and other social media platform owners to take it down.
In Raffensperger’s public appeal on X Thursday, he asked Musk to take down the “obviously fake” video he said was likely “a production of Russian troll farms” and an example “of the kind of targeted disinformation we’ve seen this election.”
Musk, the SpaceX founder, Tesla CEO and world’s richest man, bought the social media company for $44 billion in 2022.
As of Friday morning, though, the video was still up on X, a Raffensperger spokesman told USA TODAY. A few hours later, it had already garnered more than 900,000 views and had been widely shared by Trump supporters including some Republican officials and Trump backers.
Musk did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Meanwhile, he too was sharing and posting demonstrably false anti-Harris disinformation to his 200 million followers.
In one post Friday afternoon, Musk falsely claimed that there is evidence of “election interference by the Democrats in Bucks County,” a key battleground county in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Musk has gone so far as to create an “Election Integrity Community” on X in recent says so he can solicit and share claims of election fraud. Critics have said it is exponentially boosting specious claims of rampant election fraud in the current election cycle when U.S. election officials say there is none.
A ‘firehose of disinformation’
A CISA official said Friday that the cybersecurity agency, the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are grappling with a historic “firehose of disinformation” as the election nears, suggesting the videos falsely alleging election fraud in Pennsylvania last week and now in Georgia were just two of many.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. disinformation disruption efforts, declined to single out Musk for criticism or to say if the federal government had appealed personally to him to take them down.
But, the official said it was “highly irresponsible” for individuals to knowingly amplify inaccurate information about U.S. elections because it amounts to “doing the work of our foreign adversaries for them.”
The disinformation – mostly from Russia but also Iran and China − is not only flooding America via X and other social media companies like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, but through other channels as well including chat apps, the CISA official said.
Instead of relying on social media companies to take them down, the official said, “We are trying to focus on encouraging the American people to turn to the signal in all of this noise, and that signal is the state and local election officials across this country who are the experts responsible for administering” the election process.
A viral video of voting twice
In the latest video, two men sit in a car, with one claiming to be a Haitian immigrant who has received citizenship after arriving just six months ago. The men proudly show numerous drivers licenses, and the man speaking says the two already voted for Harris once – and planned to do so at least once more in a different Georgia county.
“We invite all Haitians to come to America and bring families,” the man also says. A Harris-Walz baseball cap can be seen beside him.
On Thursday evening, Amy Kremer, a member of the Republican National Committee who helped organize the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the pro-Trump assault on the U.S. Capitol, was among those sharing a link to one version of the video with Raffensperger and top Trump campaign and RNC officials.
“This is illegal & not okay,” she wrote. “Citizens of GA would like an answer abt this situation How did they get multiple IDs?”
Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, said the latest video is just one of many examples of blatant Russian disinformation that has gone viral and remained on X despite repeated requests for Musk or his employees to take it down.
But, Linvill said, “It’s not clear if it’s intentional or if it’s just a side effect of him not caring” about X becoming a hotbed of disinformation, in part in the name of free speech.
Musk has come under heavy criticism for gutting most of the platform’s content moderation and other safety features.
But Linvill warned that the rampant disinformation also could cause serious problems if Trump loses the election, because it is adding gasoline to the fire of Trump supporters’ existing concerns about voter fraud.
Raffensperger, who played a critical role in blocking Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in Georgia in 2020, said his office was working with state and federal authorities to combat the spread of the video and to identify its origin.
“In the meantime,” he said in his X post, “we ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down.”
After the ODNI issued its statement saying the latest video was, indeed, part of the Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign, Raffensperger took to X, again.
“The Russians,” he said, “picked the wrong Georgians to mess with.”
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Publish date : 2024-11-01 09:33:00
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