Matryoshka Disinformation: Fake Mother Jones Video Smeared CNN

The video looked like Mother Jones reporting. An account on X posting under the Russian handle "роман" shared a clip dressed in the magazine's logo and house style, and it made an explosive claim: the Democratic National Committee had secretly paid CNN executive Mark Thompson $259 million so the network would promote "gender transition among children."

None of it was real. Mother Jones says it never produced the video, and the payment, the 8,970 CNN broadcasts the clip counted as evidence, and the "personal emails" supposedly stolen by the hacker collective Anonymous were all invented. The fabrication even faked editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery, showing her praising the nonexistent leak as a "great gift from Anonymous." It closed with the standard card on real Mother Jones videos: "Read more at MotherJones.com."

How the fake fell apart

The clip pulled 155,000 views on one X account and another 50,000 on a second account within a day, according to Mother Jones' reporting. But the account that posted it first showed every sign of automation: it was created in 2018, had no followers, and had no previous posts. Disinformation researchers told Mother Jones that the impression counts were likely inflated, making the clip's reach look bigger than it was.

The independent tracking group @antibot4navalny flagged the video, Mother Jones' lawyer filed a complaint with X, and the platform removed the post, saying it violated its rules on trademark policy. By the time it came down, though, it had already done the job its makers designed it for: tens of thousands of people had scrolled past a convincing-looking "report" about Democratic corruption, and some of them believed it.

A familiar playbook

The fake video belongs to a Matryoshka disinformation operation, also tracked as Storm-1679, a Russian influence network Mother Jones and others have been documenting for years. Over the past two weeks, the network has been inserting false election-related material into American social media feeds, reported by The New York Times. The most visible pieces are deepfake videos of celebrities appearing to attack Democrats: one clip showed a fabricated Sarah Jessica Parker saying she thinks of "corrupt Nazi whores" when she hears about Democrats, branded with a CNN logo. Doctored likenesses of Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley Jr., and Julia Roberts have been used the same way, per Mother Jones' reporting.

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Russia has activated a covert digital influence campaign aimed at the November midterm elections, using fabricated AI-generated clips that mimic trusted news broadcasts, according to secret assessments described to the Times. Officials say the goal is not necessarily to pick winners but to widen polarization and make Americans distrust what they see online. AFP separately reported that researchers linked the current wave of fake celebrity and media-branded videos to Matryoshka.

Matryoshka ran the same playbook in 2024 against then-nominee Kamala Harris, spreading claims that she had an abortion at 17, had early-onset Alzheimer's, and that her family was tied to Pfizer, along with a fake USA Today report about Ukrainian refugees smuggling fentanyl. In early 2025, one of its fakes broke through in a big way: a fabricated E! News clip claiming USAID had paid celebrities millions to visit Ukraine, including $20 million for Angelina Jolie, was shared by Elon Musk with his then-216 million followers on X and racked up more than 11 million views, per Mother Jones.

Why the disguise mattered

Using Mother Jones as the mask was the point. A right-wing outlet reporting Democratic corruption is easy to dismiss; a trusted left-leaning magazine appearing to confirm it lands differently. The network impersonates outlets across the political spectrum, from CNN to the Times, and some of its fakes even pretend to be debunks of Russian disinformation warnings, a meta-trick meant to make warnings about meddling look like hoaxes themselves.

The defenses that used to catch this stuff are thinner than they were. The Trump administration has shuttered the units at the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department that once tracked Russian disinformation, according to Mother Jones. The fake Mother Jones video is gone, but the accounts, infrastructure, and templates behind this Matryoshka disinformation push are still active ahead of the midterms.

Related: how misinformation spreads like wildfire online; the AI conspiracy theories everyone is running with this week.