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Russian operatives created and amplified false online content attempting to smear Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday.
The content in question — which included manipulated audio content that circulated on the social media platform X in the last week — contained “several indicators of manipulation that are consistent with the influence efforts and tactics with Russian actors,” an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters on Tuesday.
The statement was based on newly available intelligence and analysts worked over the weekend to analyze the media content, the official said.
Some posts circulating the fake content on X garnered hundreds of thousands of views and were amplified by right-wing personalities. The episode had echoes of the bizarre and false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that attempted to smear Democrats in 2016.
It is evidence of Russia’s 11th-hour efforts to malignly influence the 2024 presidential election in favor of former President Donald Trump, whom US intelligence assesses is the Kremlin’s preferred choice.
With two weeks until Election Day, accusations of foreign meddling are extremely political sensitive. The intelligence community has repeatedly exposed influence operations from Russia and Iran aimed at hurting Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, respectively, in an effort to make those influence operations less impactful with the American public.
The Harris-Walz campaign has expressed concern that media coverage could amplify the false Russian claims.
“Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to win because he knows Trump will roll over and give him anything he wants,” Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in an email. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections.”
Iranian operatives, meanwhile have stolen internal Trump campaign documents and used covert social media posts as part of a multi-pronged effort to undermine Trump’s candidacy, according to US intelligence officials.
Iran has also posed a persistent threat to Trump’s life. The Justice Department in August charged a Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran for seeking to carry out political assassinations on US soil — a case that prompted the federal government to increase security for Trump.
The intelligence tying the attacks on Walz to Russia was part of a broader US intelligence assessment released Tuesday on the state of foreign threats to the election.
US intelligence officials are concerned that Russia and Iran could use disinformation to try to foment violence in the days and weeks between Election Day and the certification of votes, according to the assessment.
Russian operatives will likely question the integrity of the US presidential election regardless of the outcome, but likely will be “more aggressive” in their efforts if Harris wins, the ODNI official told reporters.
US intelligence officials will also be closely watching Iranian operatives after Election Day. In 2020, when false allegation of voter fraud spread online, Iranian operatives created a website that threatened US election officials with bullseyes over photos of their faces, according to the Justice Department.
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