Viral video of torn ballots in Pennsylvania is fake and Russian-made, intelligence agencies say

Russian actors “manufactured and amplified” a recent viral video that falsely showed a person tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania, the FBI and two other federal agencies said Friday.

The FBI and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the U.S. intelligence community made the assessment based on available information and past activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and disinformation efforts .

“This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and to stoke division among Americans,” the agencies said. said in a statement. “In the lead-up to Election Day and in the weeks and months thereafter, the intelligence community expects that Russia will create and release additional media content aimed at undermining confidence in the integrity of the election and dividing Americans.”

The video spread quickly. Within hours, the video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times from one post on X. In the video: one sees someone destroying it what are reportedly completed ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and the Yardley Borough Police Department and said in a joint statement On Thursday, they said they had conducted a review and deemed the video “fabricated.”

“Our investigation has concluded that this video was fabricated in an attempt to undermine confidence in the upcoming elections,” they said.

“The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office will not tolerate any voter suppression, intimidation or fraud,” the statement said.

The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any interference in the US elections.

Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, attributed the viral video to the Russian disinformation production team known to researchers as Storm-1516.

Linvill’s team first discovered the Storm-1516 campaign last fall.

The quality of the video and the use of actors who appear to have a West African accent to pose as black Americans were characteristic of the Russian campaign, Linvill said. And the account that first shared the video had previously distributed the content.

“It’s typical,” Linvill said. “Undermining the electoral process and sowing doubt in democracy and the institutions that make it function is at the heart of Russian disinformation, and that is absolutely what this video is trying to do.”

There will certainly be more to come, said Linvill, who “expects a new story from Storm-1516 every other day at this point.”

The joint statement from federal agencies on the viral video was the latest warning from the intelligence community about intensifying foreign efforts to interfere in the U.S. elections. She warned last month that countries like Russia, Iran and China “are somehow trying to deepen divisions in American society for their own benefit, and view election periods as moments of vulnerability.”

The FBI and CISA said earlier on Friday they were investigating “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure.” NBC News and other news sources reported Friday that a Chinese hacking campaign targeted the phones of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.

Separately, these were three Iranian nationals indicted last month in connection with an attempt to hack the Trump campaign and deliver stolen material to then-President Joe Biden’s campaign. The FBI and others said last month that there was “currently no information” showing that recipients associated with Biden’s campaign had responded to the emails.

A spokesperson for the Iranian mission to the United Nations previously denied the country’s role in the operation.