Report 4920

Associated Incidents

Incident 9722 Report
Russian Influence Operation Allegedly Uses AI to Create Fake Kamala Harris Campaign Website and Rhino-Hunting Hoax

Russia Targets Harris with Rhino-Shooting Hoax and Fake Website
newsguardrealitycheck.com · 2024

A new website claiming to be the official Kamala Harris campaign site, complete with her campaign slogans, colors, and a supposed "advisory board," outlines a policy platform that includes open borders, abolishing voter ID requirements, and other controversial proposals.

In fact, the site is a fake and appears to be part of a Russian disinformation effort targeting the Harris-Walz campaign.

What happened: On Sept. 24, 2024, pro-Kremlin social media users began sharing a link to a website called NewWayForward.us, which presents itself as the official website for the Harris campaign. The website, which carries a "Paid for by Harris for President" notice, promises "Open Borders," "Citizenship for all Undocumented Immigrants," "Abolishing ICE," "Gender-Affirming Healthcare for Minors," "Free Public College," $570 billion in funding for Ukraine, and "Ending Voter ID Laws."

  • An "Advisory Board" tab on the website lists those supposedly advising the Harris campaign, including former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and World Economic Forum executive chairman Klaus Schwab. 

**Actually: **Domain registration records show that NewWayForward.us was registered on Sept. 18, 2024, by an apparently fake identity under the name "Syrinx Difiora." 

  • The official website of the Harris campaign, KamalaHarris.com, which details her official policy plans titled "New Way Forward," was registered on March 1, 2002. 

Handiwork of a Kremlin propagandist? NewsGuard identified similarities in tactics and design between the fake Harris website and Ensemble-24.fr, a site that falsely claimed to be the official website of French President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance, Ensemble. (Reality Check Subscribers can view NewsGuard's Misinformation Fingerprint on the fake French election website here.)

  • NewsGuard found that both the fake Harris site and fake French election site look like they were created by John Dougan, the former deputy Florida sheriff turned Kremlin propagandist who fled to Moscow as a fugitive from the U.S. In fact, Dougan himself shared the fake Harris site on Telegram. (To read more of our reporting on Dougan, click here.) 

  • "You guys see what the Harris for President campaign is pushing? It's absolutely sickening," Dougan stated in a Sept. 28, 2024, Telegram post. 

  • The Gnida Project, an anonymously-run group of volunteers tracking Russian influence operations, was the first to report the fake Harris site. The group stated that the domain has "Russian connections," and noted that the site resembles the fake Ensemble-24.fr domain, which authorities had previously linked to a Russian disinformation campaign.

**The spread: **The fake Harris site circulated on Reddit, Russian social network VK, Telegram, X, and Facebook. The site was also shared by pro-Kremlin influencers including Irish commentator and RT correspondent Chay Bowes, and Pravda-En.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 7.5/100), part of a network of more than 80 anonymously-published sites publishing pro-Kremlin disinformation in dozens of languages. 

The Harris campaign, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to September 2024 emails from NewsGuard seeking comment on the fake Harris campaign site and its apparent Russian ties. (Reality Check Subscribers can view NewsGuard's Misinformation Fingerprint on the fake Harris site here.)

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