Atlanta:
No less than two polling websites within the US election battleground state of Georgia have been briefly evacuated on Tuesday after faux bomb threats that election officers within the state blamed on Russian brokers.
The threats, which have been deemed to be non-credible, triggered two polling areas in Fulton County, Georgia, to be evacuated. Each reopened after about half-hour, officers stated, and the county is searching for a court docket order to increase the placement’s voting hours previous the statewide 7 pm deadline.
Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stated Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes.
“They’re as much as mischief, it appears. They do not need us to have a clean, honest and correct election, and if they’ll get us to combat amongst ourselves, they’ll depend that as a victory,” Raffensperger informed reporters.
The Russian embassy in Washington didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In a press release, the FBI stated it was conscious of non-credible bomb threats to polling areas in a number of states, with lots of them originating from Russian electronic mail domains.
Georgia alone acquired greater than two dozen phony bomb threats on Election Day, most of which occurred in Fulton County, an FBI official stated.
A senior official in Raffensperger’s workplace, talking on the situation of anonymity to talk freely, stated the Georgia bomb hoaxes have been despatched from electronic mail addresses that had been utilized by Russians making an attempt to intervene in earlier US elections.
The threats have been despatched to US media and the 2 polling areas, the official stated. “It is a probability it is Russia,” the official stated.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are locked in a good race to win the White Home. Opinion polls recommend the competition is simply too near name.
The phony bomb threats mark the newest in a string of examples of alleged interference by the Russians within the 2024 election.
On Nov. 1, US intelligence officers warned that Russian actors manufactured a video that falsely depicted Haitians illegally casting ballots in Georgia. Intelligence officers additionally discovered that the Russians created a separate phony video which falsely accused somebody related to the Harris presidential ticket of taking a bribe from an entertainer.
US intelligence officers have additionally accused Russia of interfering in earlier US presidential elections, particularly the 2016 race which Trump received towards Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
