Fact Check: FAKE Video Does NOT Show Actual Insider Saying Arizona Plans To Rig Election For Harris — Russian Bad Actors
Does a video show an informant, who allegedly was once an aide to Arizona’s secretary of state, telling about state plans to rig the election in favor of Kamala Harris? No, that’s not true: This video is fabricated disinformation from a Russian propaganda network. A media forensics expert has identified it as one more example of the effort to spread doubt about U.S. election integrity by the Russian propaganda network dubbed Storm-1516. The audio track of the supposed informant’s story is AI-generated, an AI detector organization found.
The video (archived here) was published on X by Mira Terada @MiraMiru4 on November 3, 2024. It was captioned:
⚡BREAKING:
The Foundation to Battle Injustice has obtained testimony from a former aide to Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Secretary of State, who alleged that state leaders have plans to rig and manipulate the election in favor of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The informant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claims that supporters of Donald Trump will be randomly removed from the voter rolls. He also alleges that during the counting of overseas ballots, votes will be tampered with to favor Democrats.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 20:03:25 2024 UTC)
The bright red lettering in the upper right corner of the video, FBI, has nothing to do with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. This video is from a Russian group named Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI) (archived here).
The co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, Darren Linvill, posted a short thread on X on November 3, 2024 (archived here). He wrote:
This fake interview between Terada and ‘a former aide to Adrian Fontes’ is a blatant attempt by Russia to spread doubt in the integrity of the U.S. election.
Both Terada and Bowes are part of the Foundation for Battling Injustice and Storm-1516. This is what they do.
1/2
His post includes a screenshot (pictured below) of @BowesChay’s quote tweet of the original @MiraMiru4 post. The second post in his thread includes a link to an October 2024 report (archived here) published by Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub on people behind the Russian disinformation campaign called Storm-1516, which is tightly connected to the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice. The third post in the thread called attention to the coordinated timing of the quote tweets amplifying this video, with @BowesChay posting at 1:12 p.m., @ReadeAlexandra posting at 1:11 p.m. and @KevorkAlmassian posting at 1:16 p.m.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 20:58:25 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories corresponded with Linvill recently regarding a different fake narrative originating from this network, which he identified in December 2023. He explained four key observations about the way the network operates, which led to his assessment that the narrative was the work of Storm-1516. The report from Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub details activities of Mira Terada, the head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice (R-FBI) and the person who first posted the fake video that features herself interviewing the “informant.”
Lead Stories entered the link to this video to the AI detection tools at TrueMedia.org. True Media found there was substantial evidence of manipulation that was further verified by a human analyst (read full report here; archived here). Three of the tools in particular (pictured below) found substantial evidence that the audio was generated with AI; the Audio Transcript Analysis found the audio to be misleading.
Source: TrueMedia.org screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 20:14:25 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims arising from a Russian disinformation campaign can be found here, here, here and here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election can be read here.
