No, the viral claim about Walz’s misconduct while teaching isn’t real

A video recently went viral appearing to show a man named Matthew Metro speaking out about vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

In the video, the man claimed he was a student at Mankato West High School in Minnesota while Walz was a teacher and accused Walz of sexual misconduct. 

“Breaking: Tim Walz’s former student, Matthew Metro, drops a shocking allegation-claims Walz s*xually assaulted him in 1997 while Walz was his teacher at Mankato West High School. Metro was a senior at the time,” a now-deleted Oct. 16 X post says. Prior to being deleted, the post had more than five million views.

Is the viral claim about Walz’s alleged misconduct while teaching real? 

No, the viral claim about Walz’s alleged misconduct while teaching isn’t real. The video that spurred the viral claims is connected to Russian disinformation operations. 

The viral claim about Tim Walz’s alleged misconduct while teaching at Mankato West High School is baseless and likely originated from a Russian disinformation operation aimed at influencing the 2024 presidential election, according to cybersecurity experts. 

There is a real Matthew Metro who was a student at Mankato West High School, but he’s not the person in the video. 

The real Matthew Metro confirmed to The Washington Post that the video doesn’t show him. 

“It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different,” Metro, 45, told The Washington Post. “I don’t know where they’re getting this from.” He showed his Hawaii driver’s license to The Washington Post to confirm his identity. 

Walz taught at Mankato West High School from 1996 to 2006. Metro was a student there at the time but told The Washington Post he never met Walz.

VERIFY found a 1997 yearbook photo of Metro published to Classmates.com, further confirming he is not the man in the video. Metro’s picture in the yearbook photo doesn’t resemble the man in the viral video.

An analysis of Metro’s social media posts by VERIFY also showed that neither his appearance nor his voice matches the man in the viral video. 

According to Metro’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages, at one time he worked at a ballet academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Viktor Yeliohin, the owner of a Viktor Yeliohin International Ballet Academy where Metro worked, told VERIFY, “That is not Matt Metro. He doesn’t look or sound like that. The real Matt worked for our school. The pictures on Facebook are accurate to his appearance.”

Additionally, Matthew Metro’s brother, Michael, confirmed to AFP, a French international news agency, that the man in the video is not his brother.

VERIFY reached out to officials with Mankato West High School and Metro but did not hear back at the time of publication. 

VERIFY could not confirm who the person impersonating Metro was in the video, or if the person was created using generative artificial intelligence technologies, but experts say it’s not uncommon for staged actors to participate in Russian disinformation campaigns. 

Experts say the video is the work of a Russian disinformation operation

The fabricated Matthew Metro narrative in the viral video bears the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation, according to U.S. intelligence and cybersecurity experts. Russian bad actors typically operate out of “troll farms,” where content producers create and share information with the intention of distorting political views.

“The IC [U.S. intelligence community] assesses that Russian influence actors manufactured and amplified inauthentic content claiming illegal activity committed by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during his earlier career,” an October briefing from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says. 

The briefing noted that ODNI’s investigation revealed several signs of manipulation, consistent with tactics Russian actors have used this election cycle.

The tactics used in the recent video targeting Walz resembles a similar incident from September in which a viral video falsely implicated Vice President Kamala Harris in a decade-old hit-and-run that involved a young girl.

Both videos have similarities: A seemingly disadvantaged person providing a first-person account of alleged wrongdoing by a Democratic presidential candidate, seated against a blank background wearing a gray sweatshirt without any insignia and speaking directly into the camera.

Foreign actors, especially in Russia, are using tactics like artificial intelligence or less sophisticated means like staging actors to influence people online, the ODNI’s October briefing says. The ODNI used the hit-and-run car accident video and associated fake news report as an example.

Microsoft, which tracks cybersecurity threat assessments, identified the Russian group behind these videos as Storm-1516. The group “consistently launders narratives through videos seeding scandalous claims from fake journalists and nonexistent whistleblowers and amplifying that disinformation via inauthentic news sites.”  

A Microsoft blog post from Oct. 22 says Russia’s goal in these efforts is to fuel political discord in the U.S.

VERIFY reached out to a spokesperson for Walz and the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.