The FBI said hoax bomb threats, many of which appeared to originate from Russian email domains, were directed to polling places across the United States as Election Day voting continued.

The agency said five of the seven battleground states — Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — were targeted.

“To date, none of the threats have been determined to be credible,” the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity is among the bureau’s highest priorities.

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, blamed Russian interference for the bomb hoaxes.

“It looks like they’re up to mischief. They don’t want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election, and if they can make us fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory,” Mr. Raffensperger said. reporters.

A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bomb hoaxes in Georgia were sent from email addresses used by Russians who tried to interfere in previous US elections.

The official said threats were sent to American media and polling stations, adding that there was a “possibility that this was Russia.”

Two locations in Georgia’s Fulton County were evacuated for about 30 minutes and the county sought an emergency court order to extend opening times, officials said.

An FBI official said Georgia had received more than two dozen threats, most of them in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, a Democratic stronghold.

Police in Georgia’s DeKalb County, another Democratic stronghold, later responded to bomb threats at eight locations, according to a county press release.

Six of the polling places were polling places and were evacuated, but no bombs were found in either area.

Russia calls allegations ‘slander’

The Russian embassy in Washington said insinuations of Russian interference amounted to “malicious slander”.

“We would like to emphasize that Russia does not and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including the United States,” the embassy said in a statement. The statement was included.

“As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized, we respect the will of the American people.”

Ann Jacobs, head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that fake bomb threats were sent to two voting points in Wisconsin’s state capital, Madison, but they did not disrupt the voting.

A spokeswoman for Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said there were reports of bomb threats at various polling places, but none of them were credible.

Adrian Fontes, the swing state’s chief election official and Arizona Secretary of State, said four fake bomb threats were sent to polling stations in Navajo County, in the northeastern part of the state. three Native American tribes.

“Vladimir Putin is being an asshole,” Mr. Fontes told Reuters.

A judge in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, extended voting hours to 9 p.m. after a bomb threat at a ballot counting site disrupted the process.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, said Tuesday night that multiple bomb threats were investigated and none were deemed credible. He did not mention Russia.

Fake FBI videos spark election disinformation warnings

The hoax bomb threats mark the latest in a series of examples of Russia allegedly interfering in the 2024 US election.

On November 1, U.S. intelligence officials warned that Russian actors had produced a video showing Haitians voting illegally in Georgia.

Intelligence officials also found that a fake video was created accusing someone associated with Harris’ presidential ticket of taking a bribe from an artist.

US intelligence officials have also accused Russia of interfering in past US presidential elections, particularly the 2016 race that Trump won against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Despite a steady stream of disinformation aimed at disrupting voting throughout Election Day, there were no major incidents reflecting foreign interference in Tuesday’s presidential election, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Senior agency official Cait Conley said there was little evidence of serious disruption to election infrastructure.

“At this point, we are not currently tracking any significant events at the national level that impact the security of our election infrastructure,” he told reporters Tuesday evening local time.

Earlier in the day, the FBI warned Americans about three new fake videos using its name and insignia to spread voting misinformation; It’s the latest in a series of disinformation that officials expect will intensify, especially if uncertainty about the winner continues after the Election. Day.

The first video falsely claims that the FBI warned the media and bloggers not to publish “information regarding violence at polling places,” that doing so could automatically increase such incidents, and that withholding such information would ensure the safety of U.S. citizens.

The second fake FBI video claims that schools will be closed until November 11 due to the “risk of school shootings and riots” due to the election.

The third fake FBI video claims that the agency received “9,000 complaints about voting machines malfunctioning” and that the machines were sending out votes for selected candidates.

ABC NEWS Verify is listening to some of the false and disinformation narratives emerging online as vote counting continues.

One of the common problems that emerged early in Pennsylvania is voter fraud and election rigging.

Donald Trump posted his claim of election fraud on his social media platform Truth Social earlier today.

“There’s a lot of talk about mass CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement is coming!!!” he wrote.

The claim was: Rebutted in minutes by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner because it “has no basis in reality”.

Thousands of accounts on X also share a video as evidence of “fraud” in Pennsylvania; ABC News Verify found this to be footage of an old and widely debunked video of election workers in Arizona shot before the 2022 US midterms. .

Reuters had previously reported that what was shown in the video was “a routine procedure for inserting memory cards into voter machines.”

Despite this, the video has already been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and has been republished extensively.

ABC/Reuters