Obama sanctions Russian officials
Acting on election hacking suspicions, U.S. tosses out diplomats, closes foreign facilities
Responding to evidence that Russia hacked Democratic Party officials during this year’s presidential election, the Obama administration on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelli- gence officials, expelled 35 Russian diplomats suspected of being spies and shut down two Russian facilities in the USA.
“These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior,” President Obama said in a statement, describing attempts to interfere in the election as a threat to the democratic process.
Obama suggested that the Russians sought to affect previous elections and that the United States would engage in covert retaliation activity. The administration will soon “be providing a report to Congress in the coming days about Russia’s efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyberactivity related to our election cycle in previous elections,” he said.
President-elect Donald Trump continued to downplay the allegations. “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation,” he said in a statement issued Thursday evening.
Trump and his aides have said Democrats are pushing the Russian hack story as part of an effort to explain the loss by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement accusing
“These actions ... are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests.” President Obama
Russia of a decade-long cybercampaign targeting American government, infrastructure and citizens in general.
Obama signed an executive order outlining economic penalties for individuals and organizations involved in “tampering with, altering or causing a misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.”
The sanctions affect “nine entities and individuals,” Obama said: “The GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU’s cyber operations.”
They did not include Russian President Vladimir Putin, though Obama suggested he knew about the Russian hacking activity because “these data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.”
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president will develop a response to the U.S. sanctions, and “there is no doubt that this adequate and mirror response will make the U.S. side feel very uncomfortable as well.”
Peskov said Obama pushed forward with sanctions “to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as obviously deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect.”
The Obama administration expelled 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the USA and shut down two Russian compounds, in Maryland and New York, which Obama said were “used by Russian personnel for intelligencerelated purposes.”
Russia is likely to respond in kind by kicking out U.S. officials from its country; the United States has claimed that its diplomats in Russia have been harassed for years.
The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom taunted the White House on Twitter, calling the penalties “lame” and saying, “Everybody ... will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm.”
U.S. intelligence agencies accused the Russians of getting involved in the election to help Trump win the presidency, accusations Putin and other Russian officials denied. The U.S. agencies are conducting a formal investigation, and Congress is likely to conduct a probe of its own.
“These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia’s aggressive activities,” Obama said Thursday. “We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.”