U.S. intelligence services said on Friday that the clip claiming to be filmed in Georgia—one of seven battleground states expected to determine the winner of Tuesday’s election—was “part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”
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 (CISA) said.
Jen Easterly, director of CISA, told American private broadcaster NBC News: “We can definitively report that it is Russian produced and specifically designed to go viral, to undermine American confidence in the security and integrity of our elections.”
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 told Reuters that the content violated X's policies and “we are taking action against the posts,” without elaborating.
Posts containing the video are still visible on the platform.
Russian disinformation could intensify
Intelligence services say that the video is the second piece of sophisticated Russian disinformation to gain traction on social media within a week, following a prior clip that falsely depicted an individual tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania, another key swing state.
Easterly said that she anticipates Russia and other foreign adversaries will intensify their disinformation campaign before and after Election Day.
She added: “This is all about spewing disinformation designed to undermine trust in our elections, and to sow partisan discord, and we cannot allow our foreign adversaries to have a vote in our democracy.”
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 Republican Donald Trump.
Russia has denied the accusation.
