Andrii Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s legislature who has worked with Rudy Giuliani to attack Joe Biden, is “an active Russian agent” seeking to interfere in the 2020 presidential campaign, according to U.S. officials.
“Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday. “The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.”
Mnuchin released that statement while unveiling sanctions on Derkach and three Russian nationals employed by a “Russian troll factory” backed by an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was blacklisted in the wake of election interference in 2016. The targeting of Derkach puts a spotlight on Giuliani’s search for evidence to support corruption allegations against Biden in the midst of his campaign to unseat President Trump.
“Derkach maintains close ties to Russian intelligence and sought to influence the views of American voters through a Russian-directed covert influence campaign centered on manipulating the American political process to advance Russia’s malign interests in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said while touting the Treasury Department’s decision. “This operation was designed to culminate prior to Election Day.”
Mnuchin’s team faulted Derkach specifically for releasing “edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials” earlier this year — an apparent reference to recordings of phone calls that occurred in 2016 between then-Vice President Biden and Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko.
“Derkach almost certainly targeted the U.S. voting populace, prominent U.S. persons, and members of the U.S. government, based on his reliance on U.S. platforms, English-language documents and videos, and pro-Russian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claim,” the Treasury Department bulletin explained, noting that he also made “unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures.”
Some of the recordings released by Derkach, who met with Giuliani in December 2019, feature Biden urging Poroshenko to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor general. Giuliani invoked these demands as an abuse of power by Biden, on the theory that the firing of the prosecutor general served to shelter a company that had hired his son, Hunter Biden, from a pending corruption investigation.
That allegation, which gave rise to Trump’s impeachment last year after the president urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Giuliani in attacking Biden, has “no credibility,” according to the former ambassador who led the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Russian war in Ukraine. U.S. officials advised Biden to recommend the firing of the corrupt prosecutor general on the grounds that his unethical behavior jeopardized the rule of law and created opportunities for Russian influence in a country dependent on the U.S. for loan guarantees and other aid.
“This action sends a clear signal: The United States will not hesitate to use all tools of national power to respond to foreign actors that seek to interfere in or otherwise influence our elections by any means,” Pompeo said of the new sanctions.
