Russian disinformation

Fake video claiming fraud in Arizona propagated by Russian disinformation network with ties to "troll factory"

From CNN's Tim Lister and Gianluca Mezzofiore

A video falsely claiming election fraud in Arizona that the US intelligence community said Monday night was manufactured by Russian influence actors was first propagated by an organization linked to the notorious “troll factory” that targeted the 2016 US presidential election.

Russian influence actors “manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with an individual claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Vice President Kamala Harris,” the FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement hours before Election Day.

The video was created and propagated by the Foundation to Battle Injustice, known as R-FBI. The group, which casts itself as a “human rights” organization, was the focus of a CNN investigation published last week into Russian efforts to sow disinformation about the US election process.

The staged video was shared on X by the head of the R-FBI, Mira Terada, and appears to have been viewed at least 236,000 times before being removed. It shows Terada conducting a fake interview with a so-called whistleblower who is described as “a former aide” to Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. The individual — whose face is blurred and whose voice appears to be AI-generated, according to deepfake detection tool TrueMedia — claims election fraud in Arizona.

Fontes has said the claims are false.

CNN has reached out to the R-FBI and Terada for comment.

CNN’s investigation with Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub researchers found that the R-FBI has links to a Russian disinformation network known as Storm-1516, which has increasingly taken aim at the 2024 US presidential election.

Terada’s X account was shown as suspended late Monday. CNN has reached out to X for comment.