President Obama has expelled 35 Russian nationals and sanctioned five Russian entities and four individuals for an alleged cyber assault on Democratic political organizations during the 2016 presidential campaign, the White House announced today.
“I have ordered 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,” Obama wrote in a statement. “These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.”
Obama noted that all Americans “should be alarmed by Russia’s actions” which were designed to “interfere with the U.S. election process.”
“These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government,” Obama said. “Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences.”
Yeah they do, and the worst one is that we now get that tangerine colored asshole getting his slime all over the people's White House.
Apparently Obama broadened an April 2015 executive order giving the President the authority to punish foreign actors who carry out cyberattacks against the U.S.
Obama also announced that the Department of Homeland Security and FBI will declassify “technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence service cyber activity” to help networks defend against “Russia’s global campaign of malicious cyber activities."
In other words non-government security experts will now have the means to prevent and possibly track hacks directed against us from Russia moving forward.
Paul Ryan has already come out in support of the sanctions, saying they are "overdue," and it appears that they are supported by the vast majority of the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, which makes any attempt by the Trump Administration to roll them back especially tricky.
The FBI and Homeland Security also released a joint report detailing the evidence they have linking Russia to the hacking of the DNC, Clinton Campaign, and John Podesta.
That will make it especially hard for Trump and his supporters to deny that Russia was behind the hacks that interfered with this election, as well as raising suspicions concerning anybody who still denies that fact.
As a matter of fact it appears that Obama has Trump and Putin a little boxed in here.
Source http://ift.tt/2idfy4q
