The Biden administration will announce a series of actions Wednesday targeting what it says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election, two senior officials told NBC News.
Some of the alleged manipulation has been through RT, a Russian-backed media network, the sources said. The expected moves include Treasury sanctions and a law enforcement action by the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak publicly Wednesday afternoon about the announcement.
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U.S. intelligence agencies have previously assessed that Russia wants to interfere in the 2024 election and flagged RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and required it to register as a foreign agent.
RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties to top Russian Government officials” and has stated publicly that “the Russian Government sets rating and viewership requirements for RT and, 'since RT receives budget from the state, it must complete tasks given by the state,'" according to an ODNI report released publicly in 2017 following Russia’s efforts in the 2016 election.
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The office of the Director of National Intelligence specifically said in July that Russia is seeking to exert influence over the U.S. election to undermine support for the Democratic presidential nominee and American public support for arming Ukraine.
Russia was found to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election by multiple U.S. investigations, including by the team led by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. The probes determined that the efforts were intended to help Donald Trump win the election over Democratic nominee 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.
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“This is not about politics,” Sullivan said. “This is about national security. It 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 that Russia was already disseminating disinformation using bots and fake online accounts to hurt President Joe Biden, while he was running for re-election, and other Democratic candidates.
Russian outlets also helped spread misinformation about the 2020 election, but their impact was dwarfed by former President Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election himself.
Trump sought to undermine the 2020 election with false claims of mass voter fraud, an effort which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Nothing that Russia or Iran or China could say is anywhere near as wild as what the president is saying,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who tracks foreign disinformation, told NBC News in 2020. “We cannot say this time that Russia, Iran or China interfered in a significant way. They don’t need to write fake news this time — we’re making plenty of fake news of our own.”
It was 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 2024 Republican nominee — has still not conceded his loss, even though many Jan. 6 defendants have told courts they regret that they were gullible enough to fall for Trump’s false claims.
Trump is facing four federal felony charges that specifically relate to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, with a federal grand jury returning an indictment that alleges that Trump knowingly lied about the 2020 election by spreading claims that “were unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing.” Trump has indicated he his lawyers will enter a not guilty plea on his behalf during a hearing on the case on Thursday.
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