US takes action against alleged Russian election interference attempts

A heavy salvo of announcements. The United States unveiled on Wednesday, September 4, a series of measures, including criminal prosecutions and financial sanctions, to respond to attempts at interference in the elections in the United States that they attribute to Russia.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at a press conference the seizure of 32 domain names used in a “campaign to influence the outcome of the US presidential election” conducted under the authority of Russia. He also announced the prosecution of two Russian citizens responsible for the Russian media outlet RT, whom he accuses of having participated in “a nearly $10 million operation to finance a Tennessee-based company responsible for publishing and disseminating content deemed favorable to the Russian government”.

U.S. officials have not explicitly specified which side benefited from these interference operations. But U.S. intelligence had concluded that Russian interference in 2016 and 2020 favored Republican candidate Donald Trump, something Trump categorically denies and Moscow has denied.

The US Treasury Department has also published a list of financial sanctions against 10 individuals, including the same two Russian citizens, as well as six RT executives (including its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonian) and two Russian NGOs. The State Department has announced visa restrictions against RT’s parent company and other subsidiaries of the company, and offered a reward of up to $10 million for information on interference in the US elections.

In May, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned of the growing number of foreign powers seeking to influence the November presidential election, “Russia [continuant] to constitute the most active foreign threat”RT channel ridiculed the latest American accusations, referring to “the return of the hackneyed clichés of 2016”.