The headline made an immediate impact: “Deepfake of Washington County Candidate Goes Viral Nationwide.”
At least a few words declared by a prominent Oregon news outlet were true. The claim, however, wasn’t.
What happened next is a cautionary tale in an age of artificial intelligence, when discerning what’s real and what isn’t requires careful verification. It began when Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai, who is running for county chair, came under attack last week after giving a recorded talk in Minnesota to a group representing African refugees and immigrants about empowering young people.
A right-wing X account called “End Wokeness” shared a purported clip of the video on Thursday to its 3.9 million followers, igniting a viral firestorm that Fai and other Democrats have called a racist smear campaign.
The source of the outrage? A U.S. flag shown behind Fai.
The clip, allegedly recorded by Somali TV of Minnesota last week, shows Fai speaking in Somali in front of an upside down American flag. News outlet Oregon Journalism Project reported Monday that the video was an altered deepfake and shared a screenshot the outlet originally said Fai provided that shows the flag right-side up.
Fai, in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday night, decried the controversy.
“On October 10th I was proud to speak at an event in Minnesota to inspire young people to choose a path of hard work as a way to better their lives and engage in their community,” Fai said. “It’s unfortunate that message is being overshadowed by this divisive and dishonest political stunt.”
Questions about the veracity of the screenshot published by the Oregon Journalism Project, and the underlying claim that the video was a deepfake, soon began to mount online and in public comments at a Washington County board meeting Tuesday.
Somali TV does not list a video of the event online, a photo album from the event on its Facebook page has been removed, and the media organization did not respond to inquiries from The Oregonian/OregonLive this week.
Fai’s campaign, meanwhile, told The Oregonian/OregonLive Tuesday morning it couldn’t say for sure whether the screenshot was real. Fai said she had tried to get the original video or photos from the event, to no avail.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Oregon Journalism Project retracted its article. James Neff, an editor for the Oregon Journalism Project, declined to describe the steps his organization took to verify the authenticity of the images in its original story but said in a statement it acted “immediately” when it learned the story was inaccurate.
In the hours the story lived online, some of Fai’s prominent Democratic supporters seized on the news outlet’s erroneous reporting to condemn the original video clip. Outrage grew among her backers — and the people who believed the deepfake claim was false.
The Democratic Party of Oregon jumped into the fray.
“The racist deepfake video of Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai circulating on social media is abhorrent,” the party wrote in a social media post that has since been deleted. “This is one more reason AI needs to be regulated, to prevent bad actors from causing real harm through misinformation.”
And U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, a Democrat running for her second term in Congress, did too.
“This is a racist, disgusting attack and yet another example of how misleading and malignant AI deepfakes can be,” Dexter said. “AI must be regulated, and liability for misrepresentation of events and the truth needs to be imposed on these companies. These misleading clips must end.”
Brooke Hill, Fai’s campaign manager, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Monday that she would forward the newsroom screenshots and an original copy of the video taken at the event that would show the flag positioned correctly.
Nearly six hours later, Hill appeared to reverse course, saying in an email, “we have no online material produced or approved by the campaign” related to the video.
“Everything we have received has already been circulated online, so we have no way to independently verify, or access to, the original source material,” Hill wrote.
In an interview Tuesday morning, Hill elaborated further.
“The original clip that I was referring to yesterday… had been circulated online before it was sent to us. And we didn’t realize that,” she said. “So we double checked with the folks who sent it in and they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we got this from the Internet.’ This isn’t necessarily from somebody who attended the event.”
Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Fai said her campaign did not send the image to the Oregon Journalism Project, and the news outlet clarified in its retraction that it received the picture from a campaign supporter.
Fai said she didn’t know how the flag was oriented when she was on stage and that she would never intentionally make a speech to that backdrop.
“I love this country,” Fai said. “I respect this country. This country has given me so much. I would never disrespect and intentionally stand in front of a flag that was expressing some message about mistrust.”
Fai, who has lived in Oregon for three decades, is from Somalia, and the dispute over the video arrived at a time of heightened fear among immigrant communities.
The Trump administration is currently pushing a criminal investigation into Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota related in part to her immigration status. (She is also from Somalia.)
Federal agents searched the congressional member’s home Oct. 12, and prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives. Omar denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. Her attorneys have claimed the federal probe is politically motivated.
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