US says ‘Russian influence actors’ are behind viral election video hoax

The US government has alleged “Russian influence actors” are behind a viral video purporting to display a Haitian immigrant illegally voting for Kamala Harris in the presidential election.

Intelligence agencies on Friday said the clip, claiming to be filmed in the swing state of Georgia, was “part of Moscow’s broader attempt to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans”, and was consistent with Russian groups’ “prior activities”.

They said Russian actors had “also manufactured a video falsely accusing an person associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a US entertainer”, and cautioned Moscow planned to release more such content in the final days of the election campaign.

The warning comes as officials across the country brace for a stream of misinformation surrounding the election. Hours earlier Georgia’s top election official appealed to Elon Musk to remove “targeted disinformation” about voter fraud in the state from social media site X.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, was referring to the clip featuring a man seated in the back of a moving vehicle claiming he was a Haitian immigrant who had voted for vice-president Harris in Gwinnett County, north-east of Atlanta, and was planning to vote again in Fulton County. The camera then pans to a hand holding what appear to be four Georgia driving licences.

Raffensperger said the video, which has been viewed several hundred thousand times on X, was “obviously fake”. He added the post was probably “a production of Russian troll farms”.

“We inquire Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to receive this down,” he added.

More than 3.6mn people have voted in Georgia, which allows for two weeks of early voting prior to election day. Recent polls have given Trump a slender navigator in the swing state but still within the spread of error.

Raffensperger, a Republican who drew national attention for refusing Trump’s demand to “discover 11,780 votes” to overturn the state’s election outcome in 2020, has sought over the history few months to convince voters in the state that its polls are secure amid an influx of election deniers at various levels of the local administration.

He has also countered claims from Trump allies that Georgia’s voter rolls contain a significant number of non-citizens. Raffensperger’s office this month reported it had identified just 20 non-citizens out of 8.2mn registered voters in the state.

Musk has repeatedly used his platform on X to claim Democrats have been “importing” immigrants to vote for them.

This month, the billionaire featured a post from his America Pac throng that purported to display a 401 per cent boost in Georgia’s migrant population. “Voter importation at an unprecedented scale!” Musk claimed.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in Washington