Matt Rourke/AP
The FBI issued a warning on Election Day about a hoax video that purports to be a news clip relaying a warning from the agency warning of a “high terror threat” at polling places.
“No such warning has been issued by U.S. officials.”
“This video is not authentic and does not accurately represent the current threat posture or polling location safety,” the agency said in a press release about the video, which appeared to have been designed to frighten Americans away from voting.
According to the FBI, the fake video falsely states that Americans should “vote remotely” due to the supposed threat. CBS News has reported that the fake news clip was designed to look like it came from their network, adding, “No such warning has been issued by U.S. officials and no such report has been produced by CBS News.”
While at least two Twitter accounts sharing the fake have already been suspended, there’s little evidence that the video has been widely seen, even on free-for-all platforms like Twitter or Rumble where misinformation and fake videos have circulated freely throughout the election.
In the same release, the agency also warned about another hoax video “containing a fabricated FBI press release,” which “alleges that the management of five prisons in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona rigged inmate voting and colluded with a political party.” The FBI says this “video is also not authentic, and its contents are false.” As with the “high terror threat” video, there’s little evidence the prisons video is in wide circulation, though a Twitter account sharing it has been suspended.
While the source of these videos wasn’t immediately clear, they shared some resemblances with hoax videos produced by Storm-1516, a Russian government-backed propaganda unit. Storm-1516 looks to have been particularly busy in the waning months of this election cycle, allegedly faking a video designed to make it look like Haitian immigrants were illegally voting in Georgia, and numerous other videos purporting to feature “whistleblowers” drawing attention to alleged American political corruption.
An anonymous pro-Trump influencer who pays for a blue-check Twitter account told CNN in a report published Monday that he’d been paid $100 to post the Haitian immigrants video by Simeon Boikov, whom CNN describes as “a Russian propagandist podcaster.”
