NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
Russia was behind salacious false claims against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz that circulated widely on social media last week, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
"The intelligence community assesses that Russian influence actors created and amplified content alleging inappropriate activity committed by the Democratic vice presidential candidate during his earlier career," an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday.
Last week, posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, accused Walz of sexual abuse when he was a high school teacher and football coach. That included a video purporting to show one of Walz's former students describing the abuse, which was shared by an X account that has promoted the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. However, the Washington Post interviewed the actual former student, who is not the man in the video and who said the alleged incident never occurred.
Other posts making unverified accusations against Walz were also quickly debunked by users on X and fact checkers, who noted that screenshots of what was supposed to be an email from an alleged victim contained inconsistencies, including what appeared to be a cursor still visible in the text of one image.
The claims were boosted by pro-Trump accounts with large followings. They racked up millions of views on X and other platforms. The...
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