ATLANTE-

Bomb threats, many of which appeared to come from Russian email domains, were directed Tuesday toward polling places in four battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin — as voting for the US elections was underway, the FBI said.

“None of the threats have been deemed credible to date,” the FBI said in a statement, adding that election integrity was among the bureau’s highest priorities.

At least two voting sites targeted by the false bomb threats in Georgia were briefly evacuated.

The two sites, in Fulton County, both reopened after about 30 minutes, officials said, and the county was seeking a court order to extend voting hours at those sites beyond the deadline to 7 p.m. statewide.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, blamed Russian interference for Election Day bomb hoaxes.

“They’re doing something stupid, it seems. They don’t want us to have smooth, fair and accurate elections, and if they can get us to fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory,” Raffensperger told reporters. .

The Russian Embassy in Washington said insinuations about Russian interference were “malicious slander.”

“We would like to emphasize that Russia has not intervened and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including the United States,” the embassy said in a statement. “As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized, we respect the will of the American people.”

Ann Jacobs, chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said false bomb threats were sent to two polling places in the state capital of Madison, but they did not disrupt voting.

A spokesperson for Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said bomb threats were reported at several polling places, but none were credible.

Benson’s office was informed that the threats may be linked to Russia, the spokesperson said.

An FBI official said Georgia has received more than two dozen threats, most of which occurred in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, a Democratic stronghold.

Police in DeKalb County, Georgia — another Democratic stronghold — then responded to bomb threats in seven locations, according to a county news release. Five of the locations were polling places and were evacuated. County officials were seeking an emergency order extending polling hours.

A senior official in Raffensperger’s office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Georgia bomb hoaxes were sent from email addresses that had been used by Russians trying to interfere in the previous US elections.

The threats were sent to U.S. media and polling stations, the official said. “It is likely to be Russia,” the official said.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who is the primary election official in the swing state, said four false bomb threats were made to polling places in Navajo County, located in the northeastern part of the state and which includes three natives. American tribes.

“Vladimir Putin is an asshole,” Fontes said.

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are locked in a tight race to win the White House. Opinion polls suggest the contest is too close to call.

These false bomb threats are the latest in a series of examples of alleged Russian interference in the 2024 election.

On November 1, U.S. intelligence officials warned that Russian actors had fabricated a video falsely showing Haitians voting illegally in Georgia. Intelligence officials also discovered that the Russians created a separate fake video falsely accusing a person associated with the Harris presidential ticket of accepting a bribe from an entertainer.

US intelligence officials have also accused Russia of interference in previous US presidential elections, particularly the 2016 election won by Trump against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Tim Reid and Rich McKay in Atlanta and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; additional reporting by Nathan Layne and Ned Parker; editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler)