In a fake video, an immigrant claims that he was able to vote several times in the presidential election in the United States, where advance voting is possible. American intelligence services have accused Russia of being behind this falsehood. Who denies it outright this Saturday: “We have taken note of the statement by the American intelligence services accusing our country of broadcasting fabricated videos on electoral violations in the United States. We consider these allegations to be unfounded,” said the Russian Embassy in the United States, in a statement published on Telegram and also distributed by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The embassy stresses that Moscow has received “no evidence supporting these allegations”. “As President Vladimir Putin has reiterated, we respect the will of the American people. All the insinuations about machinations russes are malicious slanders,” she added.
It was the head of elections in the American state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, who sounded the alarm Thursday evening: he revealed this video “supposed to show a Haitian immigrant possessing several Georgia identity cards and claiming to have voted several times.”
“This is an example of the targeted disinformation that we have seen during this election and in others,” laments Brad Raffensperger, saying that it is “probably a product of Russian troll farms” .
Suspicions confirmed by the Federal Police (FBI), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in a joint press release on Friday. “The intelligence community concludes that Russian agents of influence fabricated” this recent video, they write.
“This activity on the part of Russia is part of a broader framework of attempts by Moscow to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the American elections and to fuel divisions between Americans,” affirm these federal agencies. They expect these attempts to continue until the vote and “in the following weeks and months”.
In the fake video, we see a man in a vehicle saying in a monotone voice into the camera: “We are from Haiti. We arrived in America six months ago, and we already have American citizenship – we are voting for Kamala Harris.” He then claims that he and his friends voted in several counties and shows a series of driver's licenses.
Georgia's elections official asked “Elon Musk and the management of other social media platforms to remove” the video. But the 20-second clip can still be viewed on X, the social network of the billionaire, who has championed Donald Trump's cause since July.
