WASHINGTON- U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed on Friday that they believe Russia is responsible for a fraudulent but popular picture of a person claiming to be a new immigrant saying he and a friend were voting for Kamala Harris half in Georgia.

According to a statement from U.S. law enforcement and intelligence organizations,” the Circuit believes that Russian influence stars created a new movie that falsely depicted people claiming to be from Haiti and ballot illegally in various regions in Georgia.”

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ( ODNI), the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Russian influence players also produced a film that falsely claimed a member of the Democratic presidential solution of accepting a bribe from an American artist in a joint declaration.

The site that initially shared the fake Georgia video did not provide details, but a post on X on October 30 claimed Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff had lied to the FBI about paying$ 500,000 to the agency that had previously been investigating the fake Georgia video.

Following the ODNI’s recent public attribution of three fake videos to Russia, Friday’s disclosure comes. One falsely charged Harris with paralyzing a teenage girl during a hit-and-run, and the other falsely charged her running mate with lying to the governor of Minnesota. Tim Walz, of sexual abuse.

An ODNI official claimed a third fake video created and distributed by Russia that pro-Harris voters were illegally robbing Pennsylvania’s battleground state of mail-in ballots.

This Russian behavior is a part of Moscow’s wider effort to stoke American dissention and raise unfounded questions about the legitimacy of the election, according to ODNI. The most recent election update to warn Americans of what it calls “foreign malign influence operations” was the most recent.

The IC anticipates Russia to produce and publish additional media content that would undermine trust in the outcome of the election, as well as in the weeks and months that follow, according to the statement. “IC” is an acronym for the U. S. intelligence community.

The Elon Musk factor

In the waning days of the razor-close Nov. 5 election, the Kremlin’s intensifying campaign to disparage Vice President Harris and boost what intelligence officials claim is Vladimir Putin’s preferred candidate, former President Donald Trump, is the latest salvo.

When asked if the former president would denounce the alleged Russian attack, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said he would n’t comment.

The video is also the most recent illustration of how aggressive Trump supporter and multibillionaire Elon Musk has refused to comply with at least some government requests to remove allegedly fake Russian disinformation from his powerful social media platform X.

On Thursday, CISA officials gave the first update to Georgia authorities. In response, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger called on Musk and other social media platform owners to take down the information operation on X, which was formerly Twitter, and called for public disclosure of it.

In Raffensperger’s public appeal on X Thursday, he asked Musk to take down the “obviously fake” video he said was likely” a production of Russian troll farms” and an example” of the kind of targeted disinformation we’ve seen this election”.

Musk, the SpaceX founder, Tesla CEO and world’s richest man, bought the social media company for$ 44 billion in 2022.

As of Friday morning, though, the video was still up on X, a Raffensperger spokesman told YSL News. More than 900,000 people had already watched it before it was too late and had shared it with Trump supporters, including some Republican officials, and Trump supporters.

Musk repeatedly emailed people for comment. Meanwhile, he too was sharing and posting demonstrably false anti-Harris disinformation to his 200 million followers.

In a post posted Friday afternoon, Musk falsely claimed that Bucks County, a crucial battleground county in Pennsylvania, had been the site of “election interference by the Democrats.”

In order to solicit and share allegations of election fraud, Musk has even attempted to set up an” Election Integrity Community” on X in recent statements. Criticism claims that the current election cycle’s false claims of widespread election fraud are amply supported by critics even though U.S. election officials claim there is no such thing.

A “firehose of disinformation”

As the election draws nearer, a CISA official reported on Friday that the FBI, FBI, and U.S. intelligence agencies are grappling with a prior “firehose of disinformation,” pointing out that the false election reports from Pennsylvania and Georgia are just two examples of the many.

The official declined to criticize Musk or specify whether the federal government had personally contacted him to demand that he stop them. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. disinformation disruption efforts.

However, the official claimed that it was “highly irresponsible” for individuals to purposefully spread false information about American elections because it amounts to “doing the work of our foreign adversaries for them.”

The disinformation, which mostly comes from Russia but also from Iran and China, is also sweeping America through X and other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as through chat apps, according to a CISA official.

Instead of relying on social media platforms to remove them, the official said,” We are trying to focus on encouraging the American people to turn to the state and local election officials who are the experts in administering” the election process.

a popular video of two-voting

One of the men in the most recent video claims to be a Haitian immigrant who was granted citizenship after only six months of living there. The men proudly display numerous drivers ‘ licenses, and the man who speaks asserts that Harris and the other planned to vote for him at least once more in a different Georgia county.

” We invite all Haitians to come to America and bring families”, the man also says. A Harris-Walz baseball cap can be seen beside him.

On Thursday evening, Amy Kremer, a member of the Republican National Committee who helped organize the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the pro-Trump assault on the U. S. Capitol, was among those sharing a link to one version of the video with Raffensperger and top Trump campaign and RNC officials.

” This is illegal & not okay”, she wrote. How did they obtain multiple IDs, according to the statement” Citizens of Georgia would like an answer about this situation”?

The most recent video, according to Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, is just one of many instances of blatant Russian disinformation that has gone viral and remained on X despite repeated requests for Elon Musk or his staff to remove it.

But, Linvill said,” It’s not clear if it’s intentional or if it’s just a side effect of him not caring” about X becoming a hotbed of disinformation, in part in the name of free speech.

Musk has received a lot of negative feedback for removing the platform’s content moderation and other safety features.

Linvill cautioned that the widespread disinformation could lead to serious issues if Trump loses the election because it would only raise questions about voter fraud among Trump supporters.

Raffensperger, who was instrumental in preventing Trump’s 2020 victory in Georgia, announced that his office was working with state and federal authorities to stop the video’s spread and determine where it came from.

In his X-post, he wrote,” We ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to take this down in the interim.”

After the ODNI issued its statement saying the latest video was, indeed, part of the Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign, Raffensperger took to X, again.

” The Russians”, he said, “picked the wrong Georgians to mess with”.