Biden administration to impose sanctions on Russia over attempts to manipulate US public opinion ahead of election

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will announce a series of actions Wednesday targeting what it says are Russian-sponsored attempts to manipulate American public opinion ahead of the November election, two senior officials told NBC News.

According to the sources, some of the alleged manipulation has been carried out through RT, a Russian-backed media network. Among the planned measures are sanctions from the Treasury and an enforcement action by the Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak publicly about the announcement on Wednesday afternoon.

US intelligence agencies have previously assessed that Russia wants to interfere in the 2024 election and have singled out RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and demanded it register as a foreign agent.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties to senior Russian government officials” and has publicly stated that “the Russian government sets ratings and audience requirements for RT and, ‘since RT receives a state budget, it must complete tasks assigned by the state,’” according to a publicly released ODNI report in 2017 following Russia’s 2016 election efforts.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence specifically said in July that Russia is seeking to exert influence over U.S. elections to undermine support for the Democratic presidential candidate and the American public’s support for arming Ukraine.

CNN was the first to report on the expected sanctions.

Several US investigations, including those by the team led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The investigations determined that the actions were aimed at helping 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 about politics,” Sullivan said. “This is about national security. This is about a foreign country, a foreign adversary, seeking to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

NBC News reported that same month that U.S. officials and cyber experts said Russia was already spreading disinformation using bots and fake online accounts to harm President Joe Biden, as he was running for reelection, and other Democratic candidates.

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

Trump attempted to undermine the 2020 election with false claims of mass voter fraud, an effort that culminated in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

“Nothing Russia, Iran or China can say is as far-fetched as what the president is saying,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who tracks foreign disinformation, told NBC News in 2020. “We can’t say this time that Russia, Iran or China interfered in any significant way. They don’t need to write fake news this time; we’re creating a lot of fake news on our own.”

It became clear shortly after the 2020 election that Trump’s claims were false and that he had lost to President Joe Biden, but Trump — now the Republican nominee in 2024 — has yet to concede defeat, even though many of the January 6 defendants have told courts they regret being gullible enough to fall for Trump’s false claims.

Trump faces four federal felony charges that relate specifically to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and a federal grand jury returned an indictment alleging that Trump knowingly lied about the 2020 election by spreading claims that were “baseless, objectively unreasonable, and constantly changing.” Trump has indicated that his lawyers will enter a not guilty plea on his behalf during a hearing on the case on Thursday.