U.S. intel officials says Russia is behind attempts to smear Tim Walz

Last week, posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, accused Walz of sexual abuse when he was a high school teacher and football coach. That included a video purporting to show one of Walz's former students describing the abuse, which was shared by an X account that has promoted the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. However, the Washington Post interviewed the actual former student, who is not the man in the video and who said the alleged incident never occurred. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks alongside Ukrainian officials at the Department of Justice in 2022 in Washington, D.C. Untangling Disinformation U.S. accuses Russia of sophisticated influence campaigns against U.S. voters

Other posts making unverified accusations against Walz were also quickly debunked by users on X and fact checkers, who noted that screenshots of what was supposed to be an email from an alleged victim contained inconsistencies, including what appeared to be a cursor still visible in the text of one image.