Russia Targets Harris with Rhino-Shooting Hoax and Fake Website
Russia Targets Harris with Rhino-Shooting Hoax and Fake Website
Looks Like the Handiwork of Florida Fugitive Turned Moscow Disinfo Maestro John Dougan
Welcome to Reality Check, your inside look at how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Special Report: Kremlin Disinformation Operation Targets Harris
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
1. Pro-Kremlin Media Pushes Fake Harris Site Calling for Open Borders and Other Polarizing Proposals
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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2. More Dougan? Pro-Kremlin Media Falsely Claims Harris Killed Endangered Rhino During Africa Visit
What happened: Pro-Kremlin media is falsely claiming that Kamala Harris shot and killed an endangered rhino during her March 2023 visit to Africa.
From fake websites to murdered rhinos, Dougan’s imagination seems to know no limits. This other narrative targeting the Harris campaign also has clear links to him.
Tracing its origins: The narrative appears to have originated with a Sept. 25, 2024, YouTube video in which someone identified as “Simon Mubanga” said he was a park ranger at North Luangwa National Park.
In the video, “Mubanga” says: “I think somewhere at the end of March 2023 we had a diplomatic visit in the country. It was a female American politician. Her name was Kamala. She had come with her crew, and they decided to take part in [a] safari trophy hunt. … We met one of our young rhinos, and this woman decided to shoot to my amazement.”
The video was uploaded by an anonymously-run channel called “JosephZBVideos,” which had one subscriber and whose account was created about a week earlier, on Sept. 19, 2024.
Hours later, the YouTube video was embedded in an article from the Zimbabwean news website Iharare.com. The article, titled, “Interview with North Luangwa Conservation park ranger Simon Mubanga,” included a full text transcript of the YouTube video and carried the byline “Vincent Masikati.”
The claim spread to Russian social network VK, Facebook, Telegram, and Russian blogging forums Dzen.ru and OK.ru. On X, the narrative was shared by pro-Kremlin influencers, including Irish commentator and RT correspondent Bowes and Australian blogger Simeon Boikov.
It was also advanced by websites NewsGuard has previously found to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation, including the Intel Drop (Trust Score: 7.5/100) and the Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100).
Actually: It is true that Harris visited Africa in March 2023 on a diplomatic mission to strengthen U.S.-Africa relations. However, there is no evidence that Harris visited the North Luangwa National Park, went on an African safari, or shot and killed a rhino.
In a September 2024 Facebook message to NewsGuard in response to our inquiry, a spokesperson for the North Luangwa National Park stated, “Harris did not visit North Luangwa National Park in March 2023, or at any other time.” The spokesperson added, “No rhinos have been shot in North Luangwa National Park since the poaching crisis of the mid-1980s” and that “The man in the video does not have any affiliations with North Luangwa National Park.”
Moreover, there is no record of any park ranger in Zambia named “Simon Mubanga.” A NewsGuard review of public records, news reports, and the websites of North Luangwa National Park and Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife found no record of any employee by that name.
Context: A report from the previously mentioned Gnida Project, a research group that tracks Russian influence operations, assessed with “high confidence” that the false narrative about Harris is part of a Russian disinformation campaign dubbed by Microsoft as Storm-1516.
The Dougan Connection: By Oct. 1, the narrative was shared on a network of fake news sites that NewsGuard has previously identified as having been launched by Dougan.
These articles included “Kamala’s Black Rhino Hunt: A Scandal in Safari Land Or Black Rhino Tragedy: Diplomatic Immunity or Poaching Ignorance” from the “Liberty Press” and “Kamala’s Controversial Black Rhino Hunt: A Quest for Justice in Wildlife Conservation” from the “Signal Daily.”
Moreover, it resembles previous work by Dougan: Disinformation campaigns from Dougan — whose work seems to be synonymous with the operation Microsoft refers to as Storm-1516 — typically involve a staged “first-person testimony” from a fictitious persona who claims to have witnessed some outrageous act of corruption by politicians.
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