A Russian operation made AI deepfakes of a real former student accusing James Talarico of sexual assault. The real student says "it's not me" and that Talarico "never messed with me." The video still passed 850,000 views on X in its first 24 hours. Here's how it worked. On October 20, an account that X lists as signed up from Romania posted the video, claiming abuse when Talarico taught middle school in San Antonio. Lead Stories reached the real Zyon Lewis, and he called it "very bad AI." Detection tools rated the videos more than 99% likely to be AI-generated. Three research teams attribute it to Storm-1516, the same Russian operation that ran fake scandals against Tim Walz in 2024. Fifteen bot accounts shared it right away. About 12 hours later, big verified accounts reposted it, including a pro-GOP account with 185,000 followers, and it exploded. NBC calls it the most prominent example yet of foreign meddling in these midterms. It's not the only operation. Bloomberg reviewed 130 fake videos and doctored front pages from a second Russian network, called Matryoshka, including fake ABC and CBS clips, AI videos of De Niro and Cher attacking Democrats, and a made-up claim about Jon Ossoff's properties. On October 21, the top Democrats on both intelligence committees said a classified briefing showed Russia targeting Democrats right now. Nobody is saying Russia changed votes. It doesn't have to. It makes the lie, and Americans spread it for free.