US agencies suspect Russia links to video lying about Georgia vote fraud | 2024 US Election News

Russia has previously denied allegations that it is trying to interfere in the US presidential election.

Intelligence agencies in the United States are accusing “Russian influencers” of a video that falsely claimed election fraud took place in the war zone of Georgia, days before the country's presidential vote.

The video first went viral on X, a social media platform run by billionaire Elon Musk, a staunch supporter of Republican Donald Trump, on Thursday afternoon. It says it shows a Haitian immigrant with multiple Georgia IDs who says he plans to vote multiple times in two states.

In a joint statement released on Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that “Russian influential actors made the latest video falsely portraying people claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally” in Georgia.

“This decision is based on the information available from the IC [intelligence community] and previous activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other information dissemination activities,” the organizations said

The operation is “part of a broader effort by Moscow to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of US elections and to spread division among the American people,” the statement said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia, which it had previously dismissed as US intelligence claims that it wanted to interfere in the November 5 election.

Earlier on Friday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his state was being targeted by a “clearly false” video.

He added that the clip was likely the product of Russian trolls “trying to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the election”, asking social media companies to remove it from their platforms.

The original video was no longer on X by Friday morning, but copycat versions were being widely shared.

An analysis of the identities of the two in the video confirmed that they did not match registered voters in the districts, the Associated Press reported.

Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, once spread false rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in the city of Springfield.

Trump made the claims during an election debate against his rival, Democrat Kamala Harris, in September that was watched by tens of millions of people. After that, Springfield saw a number of bomb threats that forced evacuations and closures of public buildings, as well as the cancellation of a diversity festival.

Opinion polls, across the country and in seven of the most divided battleground states, show Trump closely tied with Harris, four days before Election Day. More than 66 million people have already voted early.