Associated Incidents
A video shared widely on X purports to show a former Mankato West High School student accusing Tim Walz of sexually assaulting him when the Democratic vice presidential candidate was a teacher at the Minnesota school decades ago. But the man in the recording is not who he claims to be, and researchers say the unfounded narrative has the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign that has targeted presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the run-up to the 2024 election.
"Breaking: Tim Walz's former student, Matthew Metro, drops a shocking allegation-claims Walz s*xually assaulted him in 1997 while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School. Metro was a senior at the time," said an October 16, 2024 X post from an account called "@TheWakeninq," which promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory.
"If this is true, it's a political earthquake."
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Screenshot from X taken October 17, 2024
The message racked up millions of engagements before being deleted. Similar posts spread the video across X and other sites as the neck-and-neck race between Harris and Republican Donald Trump entered its final three weeks.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota who for years taught social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School, has been repeatedly targeted by specious abuse claims that have fallen apart under scrutiny.
And while a man named Matthew Metro did attend the school, the person in the video shared online is not him.
"Matthew is my brother and I can confirm that the video going around is definitely not him," Michael Metro told AFP in an email.
The Washington Post interviewed the real Matthew Metro, who confirmed he is not the man in the video and said no such interaction with Walz ever occurred. AFP contacted Metro for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
The purported first-person testimonial -- which originated with a largely inactive X account and spread through a suspicious website -- resembles the work of a Russian propaganda group that researchers have dubbed Storm-1516, said Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub.
"We believe this is part of a campaign we first made public in December of last year and Microsoft subsequently named Storm-1516," Linvill told AFP in an email.
The operation was previously linked to a fabricated story alleging Harris was involved in a hit-and-run that left a teenager unable to walk.
AFP contacted the Harris-Walz campaign, Mankato Area Public Schools and local law enforcement for comment, but no responses were forthcoming.
Dubious origins
In the four-minute video, a man with an accent identifies himself as "Matthew Metro" and says he was a student at "Mankato West High School in Minnesota" in 1997.
The man claims he sought Walz's support during a hard time and that, when the two were alone in a classroom, Walz inappropriately groped and kissed him. The man, who mispronounces the name of the city and school, says he ran away and kept the incident secret for decades.
The oldest post with the clip that AFP could find comes from an X account purporting to belong to "Matt Metro."
"27 years ago I was sexually assaulted by my teacher Timothy James Walz. It was my senior year at Mankato West High," the account wrote in the October 16 post.
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Screenshot from X taken October 17, 2024
The page, created in October 2023, only follows 16 other accounts. Its cover photo is a stock image of autumn foliage.
Before October 2024, when the account started resharing posts accusing Walz of predatory behavior, it had published only a handful of times, mainly to repost photos of dogs.
Metro told The Washington Post he is not affiliated with the X account. He said the man posing as him in the video got basic details wrong about his life, including in regards to his parents' marriage.
The first website to amplify the X account's video was patriotvoicenews.com, said Linvill of Clemson University.
Domain registration data show the website was registered in early August and updated October 14 (archived here).
Linvill said the page resembles sites used in the Storm-1516 campaign, many of which were created by John Mark Dougan, a former US law enforcement officer who fled to Russia to evade criminal charges.
"It's very consistent with the sort of narratives they have used," Linvill said. "This video is consistent with what we've seen in the past as well."
He said other Storm-1516 fakes have featured people who appear to be of West African heritage, although researchers have only been able to identify one such person.
Not Matthew Metro
A man named Matthew Metro did attend Mankato West High School, according to Facebook and LinkedIn profiles (archived here and here).
The fake "Matt Metro" X account that first shared the video used one of Metro's real Facebook profile pictures. The patriotvoicenews.com article, meanwhile, included a photo of Metro from the 1997 Mankato West High School yearbook, digitized by classmates.com.
But Metro, whose Facebook posts suggest he may have experienced homelessness as recently as 2021, has different teeth and facial features than the person making the abuse claims against Walz.
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Screenshots from Facebook taken October 18, 2024
His voice, audible in a clip he posted to Facebook, is also different (archived here).
"The individual in the video doesn't look or sound anything like him," Michael Metro, his brother, told AFP.
Viktor Yeliohin, the owner of a Pennsylvania ballet academy that Mathew Metro listed as a past employer on Facebook and LinkedIn, added: "Matt Metro did work for our studio over 10 years ago. The man in the video is not Matt Metro."
Reuben Moreton, a forensic expert in the United Kingdom and the founder of Reli Forensic Research and Consulting, also compared Metro's Facebook photos to the man in the viral video (archived here).
Moreton told AFP in an email that there are multiple dissimilarities -- including with the eyes, noses, ears, lips, jaws and foreheads -- that he said strongly indicate they are different people. He said a facial recognition algorithm also identified them as different men.
Claims of AI
Some researchers reported the clip circulating online was created using artificial intelligence technology, but experts who spoke to AFP were not conclusive (archived here).
Matthew Stamm, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University, said his analysis found some evidence suggesting the video was a deepfake but cautioned that it was not bulletproof (archived here).
Hany Farid, a media forensics expert at the University of California-Berkeley, said his models indicated it is more likely a case "in which someone is simply impersonating another person" (archived here).
Siwei Lyu, director of the University of Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, agreed, saying he did not find strong proof that the video was manipulated using AI (archived here).
"I think this could be a real person acting as another person," Lyu said. "So the video is likely real, but the message may not be."
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the US election here.
October 21, 2024 This article was updated to reference a Washington Post report based on an interview with Matthew Metro.