A video circulating on X purported to show a Donald Trump voter being attacked by two Kamala Harris supporters at a Wisconsin polling station.
That didn’t happen, a Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson said, and a social media disinformation expert said the video is Russian disinformation.
“BREAKING: CCTV captures moment WI Trump voter assaulted by two Kamala Harris thugs at Wisconsin polling place,” said a long Nov 5 X post by an Australian political commentator.
The post shared a silent video of what appears to be a polling station with three people casting their votes. In the video, a man wearing a red hat — presumably bearing President-elect Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” — approaches a pollster and a man voting in a white Harris hoodie confronts him and shoves him out of camera range. Then another person in a red hoodie assaults the Trump voter, who is seen falling to the floor.
But that didn’t happen at a polling place in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Joel DeSpain wrote in an email to PolitiFact.
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“We received no reports from law enforcement and no reports from any polling places in Wisconsin that this incident took place in the Badger State,” DeSpain said.
NewsGuard, a company that tracks fake stories online, noted to Wisconsin does not allow people to wear politically themed clothing, such as Trump hats or Harris hoodies, inside polling places.
(Screenshot from X)
Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Watt Family Innovation Center Media Forensics Hub, said in a Nov 5 X post that the video is disinformation created by Storm-1516, a Russian influence operation.
Storm-1516 was behind two recent Pants on Fire! fake videos that pretended to show Haitian immigrants in the US illegally say they are voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia and an election official in Bucks County, Pennsylvania destroying postal ballots.
Linvill said he and his Clemson colleagues have been tracking Storm-1516 for the past year and “are very familiar with its tactics, techniques and procedures.” The Media Forensics Hub first identified the Russian network in December 2023, it said in a October report.
Linvill told PolitiFact that there are several reasons why they attributed the Wisconsin video to Storm-1516, including the video’s attempt to incite violence and the group’s previous videos targeting the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“The originating account (Scott Goldberg, using the X handle @izzagg) is an account that only recently started posting,” Linvill said, adding that it’s consistent with how Storm-1516 has created videos in the past — by creating an account and making videos that “just look reasonable enough to be convincing if you don’t look too hard.”
Another characteristic of Storm-1516 is that the video, which is recorded from above, does not show any faces or anything that could identify anyone, Linvill said.
Linvill said Storm-1516 used an account called @AlertChannel, which is part of their regular distribution network, to boost the video.
The group also used Jamie McIntyre, “an Australian influencer who joined the distribution network a couple of months ago,” Linvill said.
We found another Australian account share the video on X. As of November 7, X had suspended it @AlertChannel and Scott Golberg (@izzaag) accounts that originally shared it.
X suspended three accounts that shared Russian disinformation about the election, including the Wisconsin video, It was reported by CBS News. We reached out to X via email for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Linvill said it’s likely McIntyre’s account wasn’t suspended because he’s a public figure and a real person, he said. Linvill said the Goldberg account was a fake persona and @Alertchannel was anonymous and therefore easier to shut down.
Our decision
An X post purported to show a video of a Trump supporter being assaulted by two Harris supporters at a polling place in Wisconsin.
But a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission said they received no reports of an assault at a polling place. A disinformation expert said the video has the hallmarks of Storm-1516, a Russian disinformation campaign that targeted swing states in the 2024 US election.
We rate the claim Pants on Fire!
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