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Did Kamala Harris paralyze a child in a hit-and-run accident?

Did Kamala Harris paralyze a child in a hit-and-run accident?

A video that has gone viral on social media claims to reveal that Vice President Kamala Harris paralyzed a child in 2011 after he was involved in a hit-and-run accident in San Francisco.

The footage, shared among prominent conservative influencers, is said to have come from a news channel called KBSF-TV.

The video apparently first came into circulation thanks to a member of the Dilley Meme Team, former President Donald Trump's army of online shitposters.

One of the first posts online came from a member of the meme team, who took the video and slapped their watermark on it, leading to speculation that they may have been behind the initial action.

“Is this true, @KamalaHarris?” wrote @miguelifornia, who describes himself as the group’s chaplain and is listed as a participant on its website.

The news program interviews a woman who claims to be Alicia Brown, who claims that she and her mother were not only run over, but were also threatened by Harris' staff to keep the incident secret for over a decade.

The video quickly sparked outrage among conservatives on X, who wondered whether Harris was drunk at the time of the alleged crime.

Harris has been the target of a baseless right-wing smear campaign in recent weeks, largely centered around alcohol, and the allegations have never been confirmed.

Others demanded that the politician be investigated and imprisoned because Brown was paralyzed.

But not everyone was convinced by the story. As many investigated, it quickly became clear that the allegation was part of an elaborate attempt to create chaos in the midst of the election campaign.

Many quickly realized that the media outlet that allegedly produced the interview, KBSF-TV, was not real. An analysis by the company revealed that its domain was registered just two weeks ago, on August 20, according to GoDaddy. The site has since been taken down.

An image of a car with a cracked windshield used in the video can be traced back to an authentic news report about a 2018 car accident in Guam using a reverse image search.

A section of the video purporting to show X-rays of Brown's injuries was also not authentic. A reverse image search revealed that the images came from online medical journals.

So where did the video actually come from? Although it is unconfirmed, experts such as BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh say the video has the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

In particular, Sardarizadeh saysThe fake website and video are consistent with other campaigns by John Mark Dougan, a former Florida police officer who now lives in Moscow.

According to a BBC report, Dougan is a key figure in “a network of Russia-based websites posing as local American newspapers” and “spreading false stories as part of an AI-powered operation” using deepfakes to target the 2024 presidential election.

Previous BBC reporting on the operation includes a false claim that Olena Zelenska, Ukraine's first lady, used American military aid money to buy a multimillion-dollar Bugatti sports car. The story went viral among conservatives earlier this year.

Fortunately, the virality of the hit-and-run accusation against Harris has already subsided, with many posts receiving community notes.

But while this false story about Harris may not last, many more attempts like this will emerge in the coming months, fueled by Trump influencers looking to stir up any controversy imaginable.


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