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American presidential election: a fake video goes viral, American intelligence points the finger at Moscow

This Friday, November 1, the American authorities attributed a video broadcast a few days before the presidential election to “agents of Russian influence.”

In this video, a man presenting himself as a Haitian immigrant claims to have been able to vote several times illegally in the key state of Georgia.

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US presidential election

This Thursday, October 31, the head of elections in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, reported in a press release “of a video purporting to show a Haitian immigrant possessing several Georgia ID cards and claiming to have voted several times”.

“This is an example of the targeted disinformation we have seen in this and other elections.”added Brad Raffensperger, believing that it was “probably produced by Russian troll farms”.

An action to “stir up divisions between Americans”

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 this Friday. “The Intelligence Community concludes that Russian agents of influence fabricated a recent video falsely showing individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple Georgia counties”according to the text.

“This activity by Russia is part of a broader effort by Moscow to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and fuel divisions among Americans.”affirm these federal agencies. They specify that they expect these attempts to continue until the vote and “in the following weeks and months”.

Last week, these same security services attributed to Russian agents a fake video that went viral allegedly showing the destruction of mail-in ballots for Republican candidate Donald Trump in the key state of Pennsylvania.

A video still visible on X

In his statement, the Georgia 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 We see a man in a vehicle saying in a monotone voice facing 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. “We checked the voter rolls. There is no match. The IDs are fake and there is no way the people in the video voted in Georgia using those IDs.”explained to AFP Mike Hassinger, spokesperson for the state authorities.

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In September, federal authorities announced a series of measures, including the seizure of 32 domain names used in a “campaign to influence” on the results of the election conducted under the authority of the Russian presidential administration, according to the Ministry of Justice.


Marianne LEROUX with AFP

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