President Trump’s administration unveiled sanctions on a group of former Ukrainian officials who worked to “undermine the 2020 U.S. elections,” in the latest crackdown on Rudy Giuliani’s associates.
“Russian disinformation campaigns targeting American citizens are a threat to our democracy,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. “The United States will continue to aggressively defend the integrity of our election systems and processes.”
The announcement continues a paradoxical situation, in which senior members of Trump’s Cabinet seek to punish the dissemination of “misleading and unsubstantiated allegations” by a network of individuals associated with Giuliani — Trump’s personal attorney, who has sought evidence of corruption by President-elect Joe Biden in Ukraine over the last two years. The new sanctions designations target a network of individuals and shell companies tied to Andrii Derkach, “an active Russian agent” whom the administration blacklisted in September.
“They have made repeated public statements advancing malicious narratives that U.S. Government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday. “These efforts and narratives are consistent with, or in support of, Derkach’s objectives to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
Pompeo put a spotlight on “former Ukraine Government officials Konstantin Kulyk, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, Andriy Telizhenko, and current member of the Ukrainian parliament Oleksandr Dubinsky.” The three former officials boasted of their plan to help Giuliani “expose corruption under the Obama-Biden administration in Ukraine,” as Telizhenko put it to Buzzfeed, which noted that Onyshchenko dubbed the clique “Team Giuliani.”
Mnuchin didn’t mention President-elect Biden by name, but he faulted the group for promoting “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations involving a U.S. political candidate” — a scheme that anti-corruption activists in Ukraine suspect has been orchestrated by Russian intelligence officials.
“They can’t be trusted, as they are pursuing their own agenda and using all sorts of lies and manipulations for that,” Anti-Corruption Action Center’s Daria Kaleniuk warned in July.
Telizhenko has continued his public support for Giuliani since the election, making baseless assertions that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in Biden’s favor and amplifying similar statements from Giuliani and other Americans on his Twitter account.
