Russian actors were behind a viral video falsely showing mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in the swing state of Pennsylvania, US officials said on Friday, amid heightened alert over foreign influence operations targeting the upcoming election.
The video, which garnered millions of views on platforms such as the Elon Musk-owned X, purports to show a man sorting through mail-in ballots from the state’s Bucks county and ripping up those cast for the former president.
On Thursday, the Bucks county board of elections declared the video “fake”, saying that the envelope and other materials depicted in the footage are “clearly not authentic materials” belonging to or distributed by them.
A joint statement Friday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the video was part of a Russian disinformation operation.
“Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania,” the statement said.
“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,” it added.
The statement said Russia was expected to create and release more such content in an attempt to “undermine trust” in the integrity of the 5 November elections.
The video surfaced as American authorities brace for a surge in disinformation in the final days of a nail-biting election between Republican nominee Trump and the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
The video, also debunked by AFP’s factcheckers, was connected to a Kremlin-aligned disinformation network known as Storm-1516, according to researchers including Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.
Linvill, who has closely studied the network, said the account on X – previously called Twitter – that distributed the video has regularly amplified other narratives from this network.
Storm-1516 has previously produced fake videos to discredit the campaign of Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, according to disinformation researchers.
In September, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center said Russian operatives were ramping up disinformation operations to malign Harris’s campaign by disseminating conspiracy-laden videos.
Aside from Russia, Iran and China are also fanning “divisive narratives to divide Americans and undermine Americans’ confidence in the US democratic system,” the ODNI warned in a memo earlier this week.
“Foreign influence efforts will intensify in the lead-up to election day, especially through social media posts – some of which are likely to be AI generated or enhanced,” the report said.
It added: “These actors probably perceive that undermining confidence in the elections weakens the legitimacy of our democracy and consequently makes the United States less capable of effectively pursuing policies that are counter to their interests.”