France Unmasks Russia-Linked Smear: Fake Video Falsely Ties Macron To Jeffrey Epstein

French authorities say they uncovered a Russia-linked disinformation campaign that tried to falsely connect President Emmanuel Macron to convicted U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the government agency Viginum announced on Friday.

What Happened

The campaign surfaced shortly after the U.S. Justice Department released nearly three million documents from the Epstein investigation. Viginum detected a social media operation that promoted a fabricated video report claiming "journalists had uncovered a compromising exchange implicating Emmanuel Macron." The posts cited an alleged email between Epstein and the late French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was found dead in a Paris prison cell in 2022 after being charged with raping minors. Viginum said the claim—that Brunel told Epstein in May 2017 he would bring "a few boys" to a party hosted by Macron—is false and that the purported email does not appear in the Justice Department files.

How The Campaign Worked

Viginum described a multi-layered information operation that used an AI-dubbed video, doctored screenshots of documents, and a cloned news site to lend credibility to the story. The false report was presented as the work of a Le Parisien reporter, Victor Cousin. Cousin, 26, wrote in Le Parisien that he filed a complaint with police after his identity was stolen to create the fake report.

"I had to explain how pro-Russian individuals had stolen my identity to attack the French president," Cousin wrote, describing the baffled reaction of the police officer who listened to his complaint.

The impersonation included a cloned France-Soir site registered at a .net domain rather than the legitimate outlet's .fr address. France-Soir publicly warned readers of "brand and content theft" and said the fake domain had no connection to the real publication.

Who Is Likely Behind It

Viginum said the campaign was likely run by an operation it calls Storm-1516, which the agency links to Russian military intelligence. The fake site was connected, "with a high degree of confidence," to another operation known as CopyCop. Viginum said CopyCop is tied to John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive living in Russia, who reportedly maintains part of Storm-1516's digital infrastructure.

The agency identified the first X (formerly Twitter) account to share the fabricated video as @LoetitiaH, a frequent amplifier of Storm-1516 content. The video and accompanying posts were then picked up and amplified by numerous other accounts monitored by Viginum, many of which are regular sources of pro‑Russian disinformation and collectively reach several thousand followers.

Monitoring, Context And Reactions

Independent monitors also tracked related activity. Antibot4Navalny reported that Storm-1516 and another campaign called Matryoshka ran simultaneous operations targeting Macron in early February, but said it saw no definitive technical link between them beyond timing and subject matter. Viginum said Storm-1516 was behind at least 77 disinformation operations targeting Western countries between late 2023 and March 2025.

The release of the Justice Department files has prompted other false online claims targeting figures such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova seized on the files in official comments this week, saying they reveal "how the Western elite treats children" and asserting that such officials "stand behind the Kyiv regime."

French authorities continue to warn the public about increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaigns and urged users to verify sources and domain names before sharing sensational claims online.