Narrative

“Threatening messages sent to voters in the name of a domestic political group”

A false-flag pattern: the messages are real, the sender is not who they claim to be, and the intended effect is both intimidation and the discrediting of the group being impersonated. Before the 2020 US election an Iranian cyber-enabled campaign obtained voter information and sent threatening emails while impersonating the Proud Boys, alongside a fabricated video about election infrastructure. The attribution is documented in a federal prosecution and in Treasury designations. Recipients had no way to identify the real sender, which is the point of the technique.