Biden administration imposes sanctions on Russia for manipulating US opinion ahead of election

WASHINGTON – The Justice, State and Treasury departments on Wednesday announced a joint effort to use sanctions and criminal charges to counter what the Biden administration says are Russian-backed efforts to manipulate public opinion in the U.S. ahead of the November election.

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

“The American people have a right to know when a foreign power is attempting 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 redacted in the indictment, the documents made it clear that the Russians were trying to bolster former Republican President Donald Trump and undermine the efforts of the Democrats, whose candidate at the time would likely have been Joe Biden.

Garland accused Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva of carrying out a nearly $10 million plot in which they hired a Tennessee-based company to publish and distribute pro-Russian content. That company then contracted with U.S.-based social media influencers to share content on their platforms. The information was “often consistent with Russia's interest in reinforcing domestic political divisions in the United States in order to weaken American opposition to core Russian interests, particularly the ongoing war in Ukraine,” the attorney general said.

Kalashnikov described himself as RT's “deputy head of the digital media projects department” and Afanasyeva identified herself on social media as “a producer at RT dealing with foreign affairs and news,” according to the indictment.

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

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

When asked whether senior Russian government officials had been aware of RT's activities, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied at a White House briefing that the US assumed Russian President Vladimir Putin had known.

“We believe Mr. Putin has his fingers in these measures,” Kirby said.

“We have no tolerance”

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

The Attorney General clarified that Iran was also responsible for activities aimed at compromising former President Donald Trump's campaign and thus influencing the outcome of the election.

“The message from the Department of Justice is clear: We will not tolerate attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government. We will relentlessly aggressively counter attempts by Russia, Iran, China, or other foreign malign actors to influence elections and undermine our members.”

Before Garland's announcement, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that its Office of Foreign Assets Control had named ten individuals and two companies as part of a “coordinated U.S. government response to Moscow's malign influence efforts regarding the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”

The US Treasury Department commented on the influence campaign, saying in its announcement of the sanctions that RT “used a front company to conceal its own involvement or the involvement of the Russian government in content designed to influence US audiences.”

The Treasury Department also sanctioned the popular pro-Russian hacktivist group RaHDIt, saying it is actually run by current and former Russian intelligence officers. It is led by Alexei Alexeyevich Garashchenko, who was an active member of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, at the time of the group's formation and still maintains direct contact with the Kremlin's intelligence services, according to the Treasury Department.

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

Alex Leslie, a threat analysis analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, told NBC News that unlike other pro-Russian hacker groups, RaHDIt focuses particularly on hack-and-leak operations and is frequently covered in Russian-language media.

A history of Russian efforts

Under the new measures, all property and ownership interests of the individuals in question that are located in the United States or owned or controlled by Americans will be frozen and must be reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The State Department also announced three related actions, including a new visa restriction on people the administration says are acting on behalf of Kremlin-backed media outlets that use those organizations as a cover for secret activities. A senior State Department official said it would also designate six RT affiliates operating in the U.S. as “foreign missions” and offer a reward of up to $10 million for information about possible foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections.

US intelligence agencies have previously suspected that Russia was trying to interfere in the 2024 elections. They described RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and called on the company to register as a foreign agent.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties with senior Russian government officials” and has publicly stated that “the Russian government sets ratings and viewership requirements for RT and 'since RT receives a budget from the state, it must fulfill the tasks assigned by the state,'” according to a 2017 ODNI report following Russia's efforts in the 2016 election.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence explicitly stated in July that Russia was trying to influence the US election in order to undermine support for the Democratic presidential candidate and public support for the US arming Ukraine.

CNN was the first media outlet to report on the expected sanctions.

Several US investigators, including the team led by then-special investigator Robert Mueller, concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The investigations revealed that the efforts were aimed at helping Donald Trump win the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

In February, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on 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, trying to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

NBC News reported the same month that U.S. officials and cyber experts said Russia was already using bots and fake online accounts to spread disinformation to harm President Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates during his re-election campaign.

Russian media also contributed to the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election, but their influence was eclipsed by former President Trump's efforts to undermine the 2020 election itself.