RALEIGH — A PAC that has popped up in the North Carolina 6th Congressional District GOP primary recently posted to X what appeared to be “deep fake” style audio and video of former Congressman Mark Walker.
The clips first appeared as two stand-alone posts on X but were removed after North State Journal inquired about them. The PAC, First Freedoms Foundation, then blocked this reporter.
The clips, however, were also posted as replies to other posts made by certain campaigns, such as the example below:
The truth was revealed by a previous Walker supporter who got this voicemail that Walker is "In over his head and feels Christian Castelli will win because he is more qualified". #TruthMatters pic.twitter.com/gmE0oK11Ja
— First Freedoms Foundation (@1stAmendmentPAC) February 27, 2024
Walker reposted one of the fake videos to his X account.
Here’s the latest AI/deep fake ad altering my video that sounds like me. We are exploring all legal options on FEC violations. These DC special interest groups/PACs have spent over $1 million attacking me with deceptive/fake ads attempting to interfere in our election because… pic.twitter.com/kuESK3zPi3
— Mark Walker (@RepMarkWalker) February 28, 2024
In a press statement, the Walker camp denounced “a deepfake video posted yesterday by the pro-Castelli PAC, First Freedoms Foundation,” which the Walker team said “depicts a false conversation with Rep. Walker and an “unknown friend,” and that the video of Rep. Walker was “replaced with AI-generated audio clips.”
“This is an egregious use of AI technology and sets an example of what not to do in a campaign,” said Walker campaign strategist Paul Shumaker. “The FEC has already made it clear that false AI content violates federal election law and we intend to explore all legal options.”
The statement from the Walker camp also referred to statements made by FEC member Allen Dickerson on AI-generated images.
Lying about someone’s private conversations or posting a doctored document or adding sound effects in post-production or manually air-brushing a photograph — if intended to deceive — would already violate our statute,” Dickerson said during an Aug. 10 meeting.
According to First Freedom Foundation’s website hosting information, the site was registered by Nicky Smith, the CEO and founder of Carolina Digital Phone, a web hosting and telecom company in Greensboro.
In a phone interview with Smith, he repeatedly denied being involved with First Freedoms Foundation in any way, in the running of the PAC’s website or social media accounts.
Smith did admit he donated to First Freedoms Foundation “when it first started up.” FEC records show a $2,000 donation made by James N. Smith, Jr., with an occupation listed as Carolina Digital Phone.
When asked, Smith seemed unaware he had made a personal Facebook post on March 27, 2023, linking directly to the PAC’s website.
Smith said his name probably just came up because his name was listed as the site registrant. He later said he did not remember much about the people whom he met with who bought the site but said he thought one was “from Raleigh.”
“Again, you’re stretching a 68-year-old memory of something I did a year ago, but to answer your question no, I’m not associated with it,” Smith said. He told North State Journal he would “check his customer records” for the individuals associated with the PAC and its website.
He also denied knowing the name “Fredrick Macaulay,” the man listed as the point of contact on the PAC’s website.
North State Journal reached out to Macaulay through the Washington, D.C. number associated with the PAC but our call was almost immediately sent to voicemail. Neither the PAC nor Macaulay has returned calls as of Wednesday morning.
On Friday, a volunteer with the PAC responded to a North State Journal email about the fake audio and video.
The volunteer, who did not identify herself but said she was located in the United Kingdom, was asked who created the content. The volunteer wrote, “What I can say is that the person that created the content in question has been removed from the team as we do not want fake news posted. Our media creates only post verified content.”
“I don’t know any of the content creators. I was just told internally he was a kid that did not know much about politics and was told to go away,” the volunteer wrote in an email to North State Journal. “We all communicate internally in groups on WhatsApp chat.”
The volunteer also referred to a statement issued by “our other team leaders” to another news outlet and provided the same statement to North State Journal:
Our PAC has a large group of content creators that post to our social media. Most are volunteers. The video in question, was posted during the evening hours after most of our team was not working by a new content creator and was never Sponsored by the PAC and was never used by the PAC for any advertising but was discovered organically from our Twitter account by the followers. When discovered it was removed within a few hours and the creator advised of this action. Our Twitter account has a large number of followers thus someone from the Walker campaign must have seen this before our vetting team that post paid advertising approved by the PAC.
In fact, the video was only seen according the Twitter Analytics by 86 viewers before it was taken down. The copied video from our twitter account reproduced on Mark Walker’s Twitter account https://twitter.com/RepMarkWalker has now been seen by over 6,800 viewers. Frankly, we don’t know why Mark Walker would repost this deleted video to this base of supporters unless he is trying to look like a victim, which he is clearly not.
We encourage you in your reporting to look at Mark Walker, who served as a music minister before representing the NC 6th district in 2015, has been accused of faking endorsements from Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Markwayne Mullen, and Reps Gus Bilirakas and Matt Gates have either pulled their endorsements of Walker or said they never gave him in the first place. Now Veterans for Trump have launched an investigation into Mark Walker wrongful and false advertising on public television media. https://veteransfortrump.us/unauthorized-clone-website-issued-mark-walker-endorsement-investigation-launched/
North State Journal has emailed Macauley about the audio and video and is awaiting an additional response after receiving the single-sentence reply “Traveling today and cannot read or respond to emails.”
On Feb. 25, North State Journal broke the story regarding the recycling of a 2022 endorsement video by NASCAR legend Richard Petty of D6 candidate Christian Castelli.
The Castelli campaign said Petty had re-upped the endorsement, however, the Petty family said Richard Petty was making no endorsements for the 2024 primary.
First Freedoms Foundation was also recycling the Petty video endorsement of Castelli.
