The FBI announced on Tuesday morning it had seen two instances of its insignia and name being misused in videos alleging inaccurate information surrounding the election.
A clip went viral that falsely reports the FBI had issued a warning to “vote remotely” due to the threat of terrorist attacks, and another fake video showed a fake FBI press release alleging that five prisons in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona rigged inmate voting and colluded with a political party.
The FBI said both videos are “not authentic” and that it “does not accurately represent the current threat posture or polling safety location,” though the bureau did not attribute responsibility for the videos to anyone, foreign or domestic.
This is the latest example of the intelligence community publicly calling out viral disinformation.
The FBI is working with relevant partners operating a national election command post from the Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., during the week of the election.
“The purpose of the command post is to ensure the FBI is well positioned to respond to threats that would come in or information that would come in that would affect our election security,” said James Barnacle, deputy assistant director of the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division. “Those threats include criminal threats such as threats to election workers, foreign malign influence, cyber threats, and acts of domestic violence.”
A day earlier, the FBI, along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a joint statement saying that in the three days leading up to the election, the intelligence community observed “foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.”
The trio of agencies said Russia has been “the most active threat” and that “influence actors linked to Russia, in particular, are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences, judging from information available to the IC.”
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They expect Russian disinformation actors to continue to push out disinformation in the days and weeks after the polls close.
The intelligence community believes Russia prefers former President Donald Trump to win, while it thinks Iran would prefer Vice President Kamala Harris to prevail.
