Russia Hired Actors For Fake US News Station Aimed At Smearing Kamala Harris

Russia allegedly hired actors and created a fake U.S. news station in order to spread a fabricated story about Kamala Harris being involved in a hit-and-run, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The website for the fake San Francisco news outlet called KBSF-TV published a five-minute video of a false story accusing Harris of being involved in a hit-and-run in the city in 2011 while she was attorney general.

The article featured a woman speaking about the alleged incident, which the fake news site claimed left the woman paralyzed. A report by Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center said that the woman was a paid actor, as reported by CBS News.

The website where the false article was published was registered online on Aug. 20 in Iceland. The fake hit-and-run story was published Sept. 2, and the site went offline days later.

There are no public records or news reports of the incident, and the San Francisco Police Department told CBS News it did not have records of it. A CBS News analysis found that the alleged video of the incident actually contained various clips from other previous news stories.

McClatchy DC reported that an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters Monday, "This content is also consistent with Russia's broader efforts to boost the former president's candidacy and denigrate the vice president and the Democratic Party, including through conspiratorial narratives."

Despite the narrative being proven false, the story was spread widely among right-wing social media, with posts on X (formerly Twitter) that shared the video amassing up to 7 million views. The story was also shared on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

On Monday night, Meta said it would be banning Russian state media outlets from its apps around the world because of "foreign interference activity."