Russian actors made fake video depicting mail-in
ballots for Trump being destroyed, FBI says
By
MELISSA GOLDIN, MIKE CATALINI and ALI SWENSON
Associated Press • October
26, 2024
A
mail-in official ballot for the 2024 General Election in the United States is
shown in Pennsylvania on Oct. 8, 2024. (Matt Slocum/AP)
YARDLEY, Pa. —
Russian actors were behind a widely circulated video falsely depicting mail-in
ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed in Pennsylvania, U.S. officials
confirmed on Friday.
The video had
taken off on social media Thursday but was debunked within three hours by local
election officials and law enforcement after members of the public reported it.
U.S. officials
said in a statement sent by the FBI that they believe the video was
“manufactured and amplified” by Russian actors. The officials said it’s part of
“Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of
the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”
The information
was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI
and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The Bucks County
Board of Elections had identified the video as fake on Thursday, saying the
envelope and other materials in the video “are clearly not authentic materials
belonging to or distributed by” the board.
The quick
knockdown of the staged video showed how election officials have learned to
move swiftly to counter false narratives over the last four years, ever since a
large swath of American voters became distrustful in the voting process in
2020. Yet the video’s detailed mimicking of ballots in a key county in this
year’s presidential race was a wake-up call that demonstrated how committed
foreign actors are to undermining faith in the U.S. voting process in the
critical stretch before voting concludes.
The video showed a
person sorting through what looked like mail ballots labeled as coming from
Bucks County. The person, who was Black, appeared to be tearing up ballots
marked for Trump, and leaving alone ballots marked for Vice President Kamala
Harris.
Researchers who
closely study Russian foreign influence campaigns had previously connected the
video to a Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516 or CopyCop. The
network has previously shared numerous videos with false claims about Harris
and her running mate, Tim Walz.
Darren Linvill,
the co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who closely
studies the group, said the user who popularized the Bucks County video on the
social platform X had been an early amplifier of several other narratives from
this network, including the first one his team ever tracked, in August 2023.
The style and
appearance of the latest video matches other videos from the network too,
Linvill said.
The video used a
Black actor with a foreign accent — a choice that may be intentional as a way
to inflame existing divisions on American soil, according to Josephine Lukito,
an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin who
has researched Russian disinformation.
It’s a common
strategy in fake videos originating in Russia, she said.
“It tends to
amplify racism, right?” Lukito said. “There’s already this kind of groundswell
of discussion about immigrants that are illegally voting or immigration
broadly. Russian disinformation absolutely exploits that.”
After the video
had been debunked, the X user who popularized it deleted their original post
and shared multiple posts from other accounts decrying it as fake.
America PAC, a
super political action committee launched by billionaire X owner Elon Musk to
support Trump in his bid for a second term, was among those denouncing the
video — a stark contrast to the misinformation that frequently spreads on X,
often spurred by Musk himself. The PAC declined a request for further comment.
There were multiple
clues that immediately indicated the Bucks County video was fabricated. For
example, under Pennsylvania law, election officials must wait until 7 a.m. ET
on Election Day before they can begin to process ballots cast by mail and
prepare them to be counted.
Other tip-offs
included the dark green color on the left side of the outer envelopes — it is
actually more of a kelly green — and the glossiness of the inner and outer
envelopes, which in reality have a matte finish. Plus, none of the envelopes in
the video had voters’ return addresses written on them.
Citizen complaints
from across Bucks County and a call from the Yardley Borough police chief
alerted District Attorney Jennifer Schorn that the video was circulating
online. Schorn was in a pretrial conference Thursday and when she emerged she
saw the calls about the video pouring in.
“Immediately at
that point, we began investigating the video and made our ultimate conclusion
that it was, in fact, fabricated,” she said in a phone interview Friday.
Schorn was
reluctant to describe how authorities reached their conclusion, citing concerns
that subsequent fraudsters could improve their tactics. She said her office has
assigned two attorneys to screen allegations of fraud and that they’ll be on
“24/7” on Election Day.
Both Republicans
and Democrats in the county called the video out as bogus and expressed concern
about how it could affect the election.
“To us, this is
disinformation, aimed at scaring voters and dissuading them from using mail-in
ballots or on-demand voting that uses the same mail-in ballot process,” the
Bucks County Republican Committee wrote in a statement. “We have seen dirty
underhanded tactics this year, from the defacing of signs, letters threatening
Trump supporters, and now this video trying to scare Bucks County voters.”
Pennsylvania Sen.
Steve Santarsiero, chair of the Bucks County Democratic Committee, called the
video an attempt to “cast doubt on our vote by mail system and, ultimately, the
outcome of the Presidential Election” in a statement.
Officials said
they were heartened by the speed with which this disinformation and some other
harmful falsehoods have been caught during this election cycle.
“I don’t at all
blame Americans for wanting to be reassured that the system can be trusted,”
Schorn said. “I don’t blame that because, sadly, you know, there are criminal
entities out there that do undermine processes. I felt reassured yesterday. I
felt like it worked the way it was supposed to.”
The Associated
Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its
explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy
initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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