Even as President Trump pursued a thawing of relations with the Kremlin this week, a covert Russian influence operation targeted the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas, James Talarico, by spreading a fabricated claim of misconduct.
Several groups of researchers who track Russian disinformation operations attributed the claim to Storm-1516, a covert group that in 2024 peddled a similarly unfounded accusation against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
The attack followed a flurry of Russian posts on social media in recent weeks and provided the latest indication that Moscow is once again targeting an American election with online influence operations. In recent weeks, Russia has ramped up those efforts, according to a U.S. official familiar with classified intelligence assessments on the matter.
Most of the Russian content so far, spread by bot networks around the world, has targeted Democratic candidates, especially in closely contested Senate races that could determine control of Congress in Mr. Trump’s remaining two years in office. Still, the intelligence assessments do not specify that Russia is explicitly seeking to harm one political party more than the other, the official said.
“I characterize it to people as kind of same old, same old,” Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday, referring broadly to Russian efforts so far this campaign. The Russians are “throwing everything out there to generate a sense of chaos and anarchy” in the voting process, he added.
Mr. Himes said Russia was focused “in a bipartisan way” on trying to harm American politicians who had been supportive of Ukraine.
The video targeting Mr. Talarico appeared as Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Moscow as part the administration’s efforts to press for an end to the war in Ukraine and more broadly tensions between the United States and Russia.
In remarks broadcast on state television in Russia, Mr. Witkoff praised President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday as a humanitarian for agreeing to release an imprisoned American who was living in Ukraine when Russian forces invaded in 2022.
The claim about Mr. Talarico appeared on Tuesday morning in a video posted on X on an account that had been created last month. Mr. Talarico is locked in a heated Senate race against Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas.
A week ago, Republican opponents spread a baseless claim that Mr. Talarico had traveled to Ohio for medical treatment.
A spokesman for the Talarico campaign, JT Ennis, said on Wednesday, “The most powerful people in the world know they can’t beat James Talarico with the truth, so they’re slandering him with A.I. deepfakes, foreign bots and conspiracy theories to protect their broken, corrupt political system.”
The initial post on Tuesday, followed by others on the same account, received little attention until 12 hours later, when three verified accounts on X with large followings reposted it.
Storm-1516 previously used those accounts to spread disinformation, according to analyses by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. Storm-1516 operates closely with a Russian organization with ties to the Kremlin, the Foundation to Battle Injustice.
Another threat analysis company, Graphika, said the video — and a second that appeared later — appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence tools.
According to Alethea, the video was viewed more than 850,000 in the first 24 hours.
Darren L. Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub who has tracked Storm-1516 closely, said the video simply recycled a playbook from the 2024 election, but he suggested that Russia was intensifying its influence efforts before Nov. 3.
“Now that they’ve started,” he said, “there will be other opportunities.”
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