US spy agencies issue new warning on Russia's election misinformation campaign

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is behind two new fabricated videos that appeared on social media this week falsely claiming that Haitians illegally voted in Georgia and that Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband received a $500,000 bribe from performer Sean Combs.

The U.S. government issued a new warning about the fabrications Friday, a week after blaming Russia for another video that falsely claimed that ballots in Pennsylvania were being destroyed.

Officials say foreign powers are working to undermine faith in the election, and government agencies in charge of protecting the vote on Tuesday have said the current torrent of false claims is greater than before. A senior official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called it a "fire hose of disinformation."


Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state, quickly denounced the video making the false claim about Haitians illegally voting multiple times in Georgia after it began to spread on the social platform X on Thursday.

Both videos were spread on X by a user called Alpha Fox, who has nearly 650,000 followers. The account appears to belong to a man in Massachusetts who did not respond to requests for comment.

The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center and Darren L. Linvill, a professor and the director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, said the second video involved Combs, known as Diddy or Puff Daddy, and that it first appeared on a fake American news outlet, Patriot Voice, that has been linked to Russian disinformation campaigns.

Linvill said the videos were productions of a Russian operation known as Storm-1516, a group that has spread a variety of videos trying to sow distrust in the election.

"The style and production values of the videos are exactly in line with what we've seen from them before," Linvill said.

Microsoft expects Russian disinformation groups to move quickly to create more content if the election is contested. U.S. intelligence agencies have also predicted that Russia and Iran could attempt to stoke protests and even violence if Trump is defeated, or if the election is too close to call.