Graphika: Russia-aligned Storm-1516 seeded 'very likely' deepfake videos of a man posing as a former student accusing Texas Senate candidate James Talarico of child sexual assault, two weeks before the midterms

Storm-1516 (Russia-aligned influence operation, per Graphika); James Talarico (Texas state representative and Democratic US Senate candidate); the X account @Zyon_Lewis_5, impersonating a real Facebook user from Converse, Texas; amplifiers including SGAnon (125,400 followers), Liberal Tear Creator, Garbage Human and a QAnon Facebook account; PolitiFact

Graphika reported on Oct 21 that two videos posted on X on Oct 20 by the account @Zyon_Lewis_5 show a man claiming to be a former student of James Talarico, the Texas state representative running for the US Senate, who says Talarico sexually assaulted him in January 2012 when he was 12. Graphika assesses 'with high confidence' that the Russia-aligned operation Storm-1516 produced the video, and that the videos are 'very likely' deepfakes, citing facial and lip movements out of sync with the audio, a lack of body movement and AI-detection results. The X account was created in September 2026 and, per Graphika, impersonates a real Facebook user from Converse, Texas, who attended the middle school where Talarico taught. Known Storm-1516 amplifier accounts, US conservative accounts and a QAnon Facebook account shared the videos; SGAnon, with 125,400 followers, shared and then deleted its posts, saying the videos were 'artificially generated'. PolitiFact (Oct 22) rated the claim baseless and tied it to the same operation. Graphika gives no view counts and the report contains no response from Talarico. The election is Nov 3.