According to Microsoft, a Russian troll farm is behind the fake story about the hit-and-run accident involving Harris

A Russian troll farm appears to be behind a hoax circulating on social media that Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in a hit-and-run accident in 2011 that left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed, according to a new report from Microsoft released this week.

The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center report, released Tuesday, said Russian influence operations initially struggled to target Harris after President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race. But by the end of August, they had succeeded in producing and distributing content viewed millions of times that implicated the Democratic presidential candidate and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in false conspiracy theories designed to damage Harris' candidacy.

Storm-1516, a Russian troll farm, first distributed a fake video purporting to show Harris supporters attacking a Trump rally attendee in August. The clip was viewed millions of times.

A few weeks later, the same group created a video featuring an actor claiming to be the survivor of a fake hit-and-run accident involving Harris 13 years ago. The clip was included in an article on a fake website purporting to belong to San Francisco news station KBSF-TV. The website was created shortly before the video was shared and fell into disrepute days after the fake story was spread, according to CBS News, which said posts on X (formerly Twitter) further amplifying the story had been viewed about 7 million times. The story was also shared on other social media sites.

Microsoft researchers also found that a newer Kremlin-affiliated group that previously focused on creating videos around the 2024 Paris Olympics has now pivoted to producing fake content to discredit Harris' campaign. This included a clip showing a nonexistent New York billboard with baseless claims about the Democratic presidential candidate's policies. That post received over 100,000 views on X in the first four hours after it was originally posted on Telegram, according to the report.

“As the election approaches, we should expect Russian actors to continue to use cyber proxies and hacktivist groups to amplify their messages across media websites and social channels designed to spread divisive political content, staged videos, and AI-powered propaganda,” Microsoft researchers said.

Meanwhile, technology executives from Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about foreign threats to the 2024 U.S. election. X declined to send a representative to the hearing.

Microsoft President Brad Smith told the panel that the company had identified another “artificial intelligence-enhanced” video of Harris earlier in the day that showed comments the vice president did not make at a recent campaign rally, Bloomberg reports.

Smith also predicted that the election would be in jeopardy in the two days leading up to November 5.

“The most dangerous moment, in my opinion, will come 48 hours before the election,” Smith said.

According to Bloomberg, Smith was referring to a similar incident in the run-up to elections in Slovakia last year, when a fake audio clip of one of the leading candidates surfaced shortly before the election.

Earlier this week, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, banned Russian state media organizations, including RT, from its apps over “foreign interference activities.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the move “unacceptable.”

Previously, the US State Department had imposed new sanctions against RT and accused the broadcaster of “covert influence activities”.