Georgia official calls on Elon Musk to remove fake migrant election video

Georgia’s top election official Thursday night blamed “likely foreign interference” for a video that’s quickly causing a stir on social media, purporting to show a newly arrived Haitian migrant claiming he was just six months after arriving in the United States Kamala Harris voted.

The video was “targeted disinformation,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and specifically called on Elon Musk, the billionaire and Donald Trump supporter, to remove the video. Raffensperger said his office was working with federal officials to investigate the video, which had more than half a million views on Musk’s social media platform X as of Thursday evening.

In a press release, Raffensperger said: “We ask Elon Musk and the leadership of other social media platforms to remove this,” adding: “This is obviously a fake and part of a disinformation effort.” It is likely a production of Russian troll farms. “

Raffensperger said federal law enforcement officials with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are investigating the video.

Last week, U.S. intelligence officials blamed Russia for a fake video aimed at denigrating Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

During the 2024 election cycle, Musk has emerged as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, pouring around $119 million into a super PAC called America PAC to promote the former president. Musk has frequently shared unsubstantiated claims of anti-Trump voter fraud, and this week he urged users to submit cases of “election integrity issues” to the “X Election Integrity Community,” a channel that features America PAC’s branding.

Although Musk did not personally share the new video reported by Raffensperger, the video was shared in several posts in the X Election Integrity Community.

The video shows a young black man who claims he is from Haiti and came to the United States “six months ago.”

“We’re voting for Kamala Harris,” the man in the video says. “Yesterday we voted in Gwinnett County and today we vote in Fulton County.”

The man and another man in the video then show six Georgia IDs, at least three of which are duplicates, apparently as proof that they have acquired the documents required to vote.

After Trump lost Georgia in 2020, he and his allies tried to overturn the election results in the state – which led to criminal charges against Trump and 18 other people. In the years since, Trump and the MAGA movement have worked diligently to entrench his election lies into state politics by filling state and county election boards with election deniers.

In both counties mentioned in the fake video – Gwinnett and Fulton – election officials have challenged the results of the 2020 election and supported rules passed by the new MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board that would give county election officials the power to do so Arbitrarily reject election Confirm election results.

Those rules and another designed to slow vote counting were recently deemed “unconstitutional” by judges and will not apply to Tuesday’s election.

Members of the election boards in the two counties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fake video, which began circulating as early as 1 p.m. on Thursday, was featured in various posts on They baselessly claimed that the migrants were eating the neighbors’ cats and dogs. Trump has threatened to deport them, even though most of them live legally in the United States.

It is illegal and extremely rare for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. Still, Republicans have frequently claimed that Democrats are allowing migrants into the U.S. so they can get their votes, and the GOP intends to use claims about non-citizens voting — however baseless they may be — to influence the 2024 election results to question if Harris wins or has the lead.

Shortly before Raffensperger’s press release, a screenshot of the video was shared on the Facebook page of VoterGA, Georgia’s most prominent anti-voter network.

“He needs to go to jail,” one woman wrote in the forum, referring to the man in the video.

Musk’s call to use X as a forum to spread election fraud claims was heeded by users, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Last week, Greene reached out to X and claimed that the voting machines in her district had “swapped the votes.”

Local election officials and Raffensperger’s office quickly refuted the claim, saying the voter’s printed ballot did not match her selection at the machine because the woman herself had made mistakes.

Greene continues to claim that machines are swapping votes, and posted a video on X on Thursday evening purporting to show such a case in Arkansas.