White House finally finds its Russia moment

And in the 14th month of the Trump administration it has officially acknowledged — and issued sanctions over — Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and its ongoing cyber war against this nation, and taken action.

All it took was a nerve gas attack on British soil, Russian targeting of the U.S. power grid and the indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three corporations last month by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyberattacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday. “These targeted sanctions are a part of a broader effort to address the ongoing nefarious attacks emanating from Russia.” Well, better late than never. The FBI, Homeland Security and the nation’s intelligence agencies were apparently sufficiently persuasive in convincing even this see-no-Russian-evil president that indeed for the past year Russian intelligence (and their like-minded private partners) have infiltrated the U.S. energy and nuclear infrastructure, along with water supplies, aviation and the manufacturing sector.

Perhaps, Make America Vulnerable Again wasn’t going to be much of a campaign slogan in the years ahead.

Five Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency, which was charged by the Mueller investigation with leading the social media campaign to disrupt the 2016 election, were sanctioned along with 19 Russian individuals, including Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” and among those included in the Mueller indictments.

The sanctions, authorized under a bill passed by Congress last year but never before used by the Trump administration, will freeze any assets held by the individuals or companies and bar Americans from doing business with any of them.

Homeland Security has also shared with the industries targeted in the attacks information on how the Russians accessed their systems and has helped shore up those vulnerabilities — especially with regard to the power grid.

There is some skepticism that such targeted sanctions — some on individuals already under sanctions from the Obama administration — will do much of anything to deter further aggression.

But it certainly wouldn’t hurt if President Trump himself would step into the fray — and personally acknowledge the threats that the rest of his team has put before him.