US intel says Russian actors made the fake Georgia voter fraud video — and expects more to come
A video circulating online suggests that Haitian nationals are committing voter fraud in Georgia. But it’s all fake, US intel group says.
Russian influence actors were behind the fake Georgia voter fraud video that’s been circulating online, US intelligence officials said.
In a joint statement released on Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Russia made a false video purporting to show non-US citizens from Haiti illegally voting in multiple counties in Georgia.
In the video, a man claims that he and an unknown number of other people came to the US from Haiti six months ago, obtained US citizenship and licenses, and voted for Kamala Harris in Georgia’s Gwinnett County and Fulton County. He holds up what appears to be fake licenses — all with the same ID picture — and invites “all Haitians to come to America and bring families.”
The video spread across multiple social media sites, including X, with users calling out voter fraud in favor of Harris.
But it’s all fake, and the result of Russian interference, the US intel group says.
“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, as detailed in prior ODNI election updates,” the ODNI, FBI, and CISA said in their joint statement.
The intelligence group said they made their judgement based on “information available” to them and on “prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities.”
Prior to the statement, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger posted on X on Thursday calling out the video as “obviously fake” and likely “a production of Russian troll farms.”
In a statement posted on X, Raffensperger urges “Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down.”
More disinformation is likely to crop up before Election Day and beyond, the US intel group warned.
“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 group said in its statement, referring to itself as the “intelligence community” or “IC.”
Russia has a long history of running disinformation campaigns in the US.
A NewsGuard audit over the summer found that leading AI chatbots were falsely citing Moscow-funded fake news sources as fact more than 30% of the time. And a 2023 US intelligence assessment found that Russia uses spies, social media, and state-sanctioned media to denigrate and sow distrust in democratic elections around the world, B-17 previously reported.
Meta wrote in a recent report that Russia is the top source of misinformation in the world, warning that the country will focus on influencing the US election and gaining support for its widely criticized war in Ukraine.
