French authorities say a coordinated campaign, tied to a Russian-linked disinformation network, sought to spread false claims linking President Emmanuel Macron to the Epstein scandal, using a fabricated news article that went viral on social media platform X.
The disinformation campaign is linked to the Russian network Storm-1516 and falsely suggested Macron was involved in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a government source told French news agency AFP on Friday.
According to the source, the operation was detected on Wednesday by Viginum, the French agency tasked with countering foreign digital interference.
It relied on the creation of a website impersonating the French news site France Soir, on which a fabricated article was published accusing the French president of involvement in the Epstein case. France Soir denied publishing any such content.
This claim was then amplified on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), the source said, confirming findings by French news channel BFMTV.
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BFMTV reports that the campaign involved a video made using artificial intelligence that was circulated on X, where it had amassed close to 700, 000 views by late afternoon on Wednesday.
The article, which had been posted earlier that day, falsely claimed that Macron had attended gatherings hosted by Epstein in Paris, at which it alleged the presence of “young boys”.
French authorities monitored the subsequent online amplification, which they said was carried out by numerous accounts likely paid for by the Storm-1516 network, whose activities they have been monitoring since 2023.
As news outlet Franceinfo reported, the French president’s name does appear more than 200 times in the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents tied to the Epstein case and published by the US Justice Department.
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However, these mentions do not indicate any wrongdoing. According to Franceinfo, Macron’s name appears mainly in discussions between other individuals, and there is no evidence of any meeting or exchange between him and the US financier, who died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors.
Franceinfo also linked a post on X which was flagged on Thursday by the French foreign ministry’s French Response account to the campaign. A woman using the name "Loetitia" claimed Macron was a frequent guest at Epstein's residence in Paris, citing the fabricated article.
According to Viginum, Storm-1516 has been responsible for at least 77 disinformation campaigns since its emergence in late 2023. The agency said the group's activities pose a significant threat to public debate on the internet in France and Europe.
(with newswires)
