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Obama Administration Issues Sanctions on Russia In Response to Hacking (Updated)

By Michael Warren

The Obama administration announced an amendment to an executive order Thursday that introduces targeted sanctions on Russian assets here in the United States. The sanctions come in response to reported cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other groups by Russian-backed hackers.

“President Obama authorized a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election in 2016,” said the White House in a statement. “Russia’s cyber activities were intended to influence the election, erode faith in U.S. democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the U.S. government. These actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

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The new actions include declaring 35 Russian government officials operating in the United States as “persona non grata” and requiring those persons to leave the country within 72 hours. The federal government will also deny the Russians access to two of its government-owned compounds in the U.S., one in Maryland and the other in New York.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has already responded to the sanctions, according to the Associated Press, saying Russia will consider retaliating.

The administration has also released a joint report between the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation with more details of how Russian intelligence compromised online networks of the DNC and other private, political, and governmental organizations.

Republican House speaker Paul Ryan praised the sanctions in a statement Thursday while saying they were “overdue.” “Russia does not share America’s interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world,” Ryan said. “While today’s action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia. And it serves as a prime example of this administration’s ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world.”

GOP senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who have been among those calling for sanctions against Russia, said Obama’s actions were “long overdue” and are a “small price for Russia to pay” for attempting to interfere in the election. “We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia,” McCain and Graham said.

While Donald Trump has not yet spoken publicly about the executive action, the Republican president-elect dismissed a question Wednesday night about the push from McCain and Graham for tough sanctions on Russia:


The sanctions come at a curious time for the outgoing Obama White House. For months, Republican members of Congress and the FBI have been urging the Obama administration to pursue action against Russia. Here’s Politico‘s report from earlier this month:

Sen. Tom Cotton, a leading GOP defense hawk who has long urged President Barack Obama to take a harder line on Russia, sought to force the White House to create a panel with representatives from a number of government agencies to counter Russian efforts “to exert covert influence,” including by exposing Russian “falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations.” But the administration rejected the call, saying in a letter to Congress that hasn’t been released publicly that the panel would duplicate existing efforts to battle Russian influence operations — an argument Cotton rejects. His proposed task force drew bipartisan support as part of a larger intelligence authorization bill that passed the House but never got a floor vote in the Senate. The panel would not have been set up in time to have had an impact on Russia’s role in last month’s presidential election — even if the intelligence bill had become law. But the Arkansas senator said in an interview the White House’s dismissal of his proposal is symptomatic of the administration’s lax pre-election attitude toward Russia.

And as Stephen F. Hayes pointed out in a recent editorial for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Obama’s newfound hawkishness toward Russia belies a record of avoid confrontation or “provocation”:

The Obama administration has been even more accommodating behind the scenes. When congressional Republicans and the FBI urged the administration to enforce existing rules restricting travel of Russian “diplomats” inside the United States, the administration, citing concerns about provocation, refused. The “provocation” would have been our enforcing the rules, not the Russians’ violating them (often intelligence officials under diplomatic cover). When the pro-Western Ukrainian government begged the Obama administration for computer equipment and other nonlethal aid that might help thwart the Russian invasion of Crimea, the State Department repeatedly denied those requests and urged Ukraine—the country being overrun—to avoid escalating tensions. Even as the U.S. intelligence community accumulated evidence that Russians were complicit in the atrocities committed in Syria by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration proposed sharing sensitive intelligence with Russians in a “joint integration cell.” You’ll forgive us if we’re skeptical about Obama’s advice to Trump on Russia. This is the same president whose secretary of state dramatically presented a “reset” button to her Russian counterpart to signal a new era of friendliness. It’s the same president who was caught in 2012 on an open microphone whispering assurances to President Dmitry Medvedev: “After my election I have more flexibility.”

Update: President-elect Trump issued a brief statement Thursday evening on the new sanctions. “It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said. “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.”

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