Biden administration imposes sanctions on Russia for attempting to manipulate US public opinion ahead of election

WASHINGTON — The Justice, State and Treasury departments announced Wednesday they will take joint action to seek sanctions and criminal charges over what the Biden administration says are Russian government-sponsored efforts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the indictment of two employees of the Russian-backed media network RT, accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, in an indictment unsealed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York.

“The American people have a right to know when a foreign power seeks to exploit the free exchange of ideas in our country to spread its own propaganda,” Garland said.

Although the names of political parties and candidates were obscured in the indictment, the documents made clear that the Russians wanted to support Republican former President Donald Trump and harm the Democratic effort, whose likely candidate at the time was Joe Biden.

Garland accused Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva of implementing a nearly $10 million scheme to hire a Tennessee-based company to publish and distribute pro-Russian content. That company then struck deals with American social media influencers to share the content on its platforms. That information was “often aligned with Russia’s interests in exacerbating internal divisions in the United States in order to undermine U.S. opposition to Russia’s core interests, particularly the ongoing war in Ukraine,” the attorney general said.

According to the indictment, Kalashnikov introduced himself as “deputy head of the digital media projects department” of RT, while Afanasyeva introduced herself on social media as “a producer at RT dealing with foreign affairs and news.”

“The company never disclosed to the influencers or its millions of followers its connections to RT and the Russian government. Instead, the defendants and the company claimed the company was funded by a private investor, but that private investor was a fictitious person,” Garland said.

The company posted “hundreds of videos” that included “commentary on events and issues in the United States, such as immigration, inflation, and other domestic and foreign policy topics.”

At a White House briefing, when asked whether senior Russian officials had knowledge of RT’s activities, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied that the U.S. believes Russian President Vladimir Putin knew about it.

“We believe Mr. Putin is considering these actions,” Kirby said.

“We have no tolerance”

The attorney general said the investigation is ongoing and the Justice Department has seized 32 internet domains that the Russian government and Russian actors used to influence the U.S. election.

The attorney general made clear that Iran also bears responsibility for actions aimed at compromising former President Donald Trump’s campaign and thus interfering in the election outcome.

“The message from the Department of Justice is clear: We do not tolerate attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government. We will be uncompromisingly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia, Iran, China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in elections and undermine our members.”

Ahead of Garland’s announcement, the Treasury Department announced that its Office of Foreign Assets Control had designated 10 individuals and two entities as part of the U.S. government’s “coordinated response to Moscow’s malign efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

The Treasury Department addressed the influence campaign, saying in its sanctions announcement that RT “used a front company to conceal its own involvement or the involvement of the Russian government in content intended to influence U.S. audiences.”

Treasury also sanctioned a popular pro-Russian hacktivist group, RaHDit, and found that it was in fact run by current and former Russian intelligence officers. It is headed by Aleksey Alekseyevich Garashchenko, who at the time of the group’s founding was an active member of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency, and still maintains direct contacts with Kremlin intelligence agencies, Treasury said.

RaHDIt is one of dozens of pro-Russian hacktivist groups that have emerged since Russia invaded Ukraine. Like most such groups, it boasts about its activities on Telegram, where its channel has more than 60,000 followers. Many of its posts are devoted to revealing photos, names, and other biographical information about people who allegedly work for Ukraine.

Alex Leslie, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told NBC News that RaHDIt, unlike some other pro-Russian hacking groups, focuses specifically on hacking and data leak operations and is frequently covered by Russian-language media.

History of Russian efforts

Under the new rules, all property and interests in property of designated individuals that are in the U.S. or owned or controlled by Americans will be blocked and must be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department said.

The State Department also announced three related actions, including a new visa restriction policy imposed on individuals the administration said were acting on behalf of Kremlin-backed media organizations that use the organizations as a front for covert activities. A senior State Department official said it was also designating six RT affiliates operating in the U.S. as “foreign missions,” and was offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on potential foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. elections.

U.S. intelligence agencies have previously assessed that Russia intends to interfere in the 2024 election and have designated RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and required it to register as a foreign agent.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties to the highest-ranking officials of the Russian government” and has publicly stated that “the Russian government sets the viewership and audience requirements for RT, and since RT receives its budget from the state, it must fulfill the tasks assigned by the state,” according to an ODNI report published publicly in 2017 after Russia’s actions in the 2016 elections.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence explicitly stated in July that Russia was attempting to influence the U.S. election in order to undermine support for the Democratic presidential candidate as well as American public support for arming Ukraine.

CNN was the first to report on the expected sanctions.

Russia was found to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election by multiple U.S. investigations, including by a team led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. The investigations concluded that the actions were intended to help Donald Trump win the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

In February, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Biden administration had “concerns” about possible Russian interference in the 2024 election cycle.

“This is not a political issue,” Sullivan said. “This is a national security issue. This is about a foreign country, a foreign adversary, that wants to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

That same month, NBC News reported that U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts said Russia was already spreading disinformation through bots and fake online accounts to harm President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election, as well as other Democratic candidates.

Russian media also helped spread disinformation about the 2020 election, but their impact was overshadowed by former President Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election results.