Biden administration announces major actions to tackle Russian efforts to influence 2024 election

The Biden administration on Wednesday laid out a comprehensive strategy to counter an extensive Russian government operation aimed at interceding the next US presidential elections in 2024, and unmasked the criminal charges against two Russian individuals, imposed penalties on 10 more persons and entities, besides confiscation of 32 online domains. 
 
According to the information provided by the US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, following the order of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, three Russian companies initiated operation of using fake accounts to spread false information on social networks. Some internal documents have been procured from one of those Russian companies which suggested that propagating material was planned in order to promote the candidacy of Donald Trump or whoever the Republican candidate for president happened to be, as was pointed out an an FBI affidavit. 
 
Similarly, two staffers of RT, the Russian state funded media organization, were indicted in a US court for having been involved in a conspiracy to launder nearly $10 million to fund a Tennessee-based front company that procured social media content with the aim of causing social animosity among Americans as charged by the Justice Department. The scheme reached millions of American news consumers with what Attorney General Merrick Garland has called “covert Russian government influence. ” 
 
Combined, the moves constitute the Biden administration’s most substantive initiative made public in confronting alleged Russian interference with U. S. elections. Following the allegations that Iran seeks to hack the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns last month, Wednesday’s actions are a clear indication that identified Russia as a key threat to November’s election, according to anonymous sources. 

Among the three Russian firm, which the Justice Department accused of running the internet domains, there is the firm called the Social Design Agency, or SDA which, according to the Treasury department, was already engaged in running fake news sites in Europe on behalf of the Russian government. 
 
first posted the information on the intended actions by the US on Wednesday morning. The Russian operation is going through both, American and non-American sources, four sources confided to CNN. 
 
The 287 FBI affidavit published on Wednesday outlines the operations of the domain seizures and expanded the plot which was initially presented as a plot by the Kremlin to disseminate fake news stories in order to portray US politicians supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia as antisemites and foment division in US society. 
 
Inside SDA documents referenced in the affidavit which seem to have been written prior to Trump actually becoming the GOP presumptive nominee in the year 2020 detail one of the “objectives” of the company’s manipulation campaign as being to “guarantee the triumph of a U. S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his internal party rivals” in the 2024 election. 
 
None of the documents annexed to the affidavit mention Trump by name; nonetheless, the US intelligence community said that these preferences remain the same since 2020 when Russia launched a series of influence operations geared toward the presidential race in support of Trump and seeking to discredit Biden. 
 
The SDA materials also suggest engaging US voters in six swing states with disinformation which focuses on such topics as the “fear of losing a job for white people in America” as well as the issue of crime allegedly committed by “Ukrainian immigrants,” as stated in the FBI affidavit. 
 
Prosectors in the indictment of two RT employees also depict an operation aimed at promoting the Russian propaganda, in some measure, through such content and news articles that favored Trump and others that the Kremlin considered more friendly to its cause. 
 
The unnamed Tennessee-based firm that the Justice Department claims was funded by Russian operatives in its conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 election is identified by the Daily Beast as Tenet Media LLC, associated with right-wing commentators with millions of followers on youtube and other social media apps, the newspaper writes citing a US official familiar with the probe. 
 
The news outlet known as RT was formerly known as Russia Today; RT has global television and online mission promoting the Kremlin’s agenda. The Justice Department pushed RT America to register as a foreign agent in the year 2017 after U. S intelligence agency felt that the channel played a part in Russian interference in the 2016 elections. 
 
Wednesday’s announcements represent the second large-scale attempt by the Biden administration to counter RT in the past two months alone. In July, the Justice Department said that one of its employee of RT was involved in a conspiracy that created a network of around 1000 social media accounts which claimed to be residents of the United States to spread disinformation on the Ukraine war and other issues. The US officials claimed that Kremlin funded the operation; the Kremlin dismissed this claim. 
 
Contacted for a reaction to the allegations, an RT spokesperson refrained from responding to the specifics of the claims while sending childish comments containing, “2016 called and wants its clichés. ” 

tried to reach Social Design Agency for a response but could not get an interview at the time of writing this piece. 
 
Since Russians active in 2016, when they hacked the Democratic National Committee and released documents designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, a series of foreign operators have tried to sway US elections. 
 
This potentiality has American officials on the alert in the light of the alleged hack and leak soon before the 2024 election that Iran,like Russia in 2016, has adopted. Also in June Iranian government hackers penetrated the Trump campaign, made off with internal documents, and provided them to the media. It has been revealed by CNN that the hackers compromised the email of a long-time Trump associate –Roger Stone to affect the campaign workforce. 
 
US officials are also watching China who, according to US officials and private researchers, deploys a huge network of internet accounts for such operations to influence the US voters as well. During the Biden-Xi call last November, the Chinese leader assured the US president that China played no role in the 2020 US presidential election and also said that China would not interfere in the 2024 US presidential election, as CNN pointed out. 
 
However, any alien or domestic endeavors to influence the American election and the voters’ choice do not alters the fact that the process of voting is almost impossible to manipulate and is safeguarded. The simplest action, which supposedly may have swung the election, that is, altering vote tallies — the American people and their government have not been presented with any evidence whatsoever of any foreign or domestic campaign’s success in the endeavor. 
 
About 97% of the registered voters in the 2024 US election are likely to vote in a jurisdiction with a verified paper record — further increasing the visibility of the vote, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly said this week.