US President Donald Trump in 2018 sanctioned a cyber attack against the Russian organization Internet Research Agency. He said this during a conversation with the journalist for The Washington Post, Mark Thyssen. During the interview, Thyssen asked Trump if he sanctioned the cyber attack that the U.S. media reported in 2019. “That's right,” Trump answered.

At the same time, according to Trump, in 2016, President Barack Obama “knew about the manipulations of Russia before the election,” but did not take any action, since he believed that Trump’s main opponent, Hillary Clinton, would win the election.

“Obama said nothing. And he did not say anything because he did not want to get into it, because because of the fake polls he thought that Hillary Clinton was winning. He believed that she would triumph. But the silent majority said, “No, we like Trump,” the 45th president of the United States explained.

Donald Trump also emphasized that he took much more restrictive measures against Moscow than Barack Obama.

“There is no one who would be tougher towards Russia than President Donald Trump,” the head of the White House announced himself in a third person in April 2019 during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

He also recalled his “rigidity” in a conversation with The Washington Post journalist, citing as an example the dispatch of Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine, while the Obama administration, he said, sent only non-lethal weapons to Kiev. Trump also recalled the pressure on Germany because of the Nord Stream 2 project, as well as the restoration of the power of the American armed forces.

Recall that information that the US president sanctioned a cyber attack against a Russian agency, which in the West is considered a “troll factory”, and which allegedly was involved in interfering in US elections, appeared in 2019. Then, citing its sources in the White House, the NBC television channel and the newspaper The Washington Post reported this. The cyberattack was carried out in order to prevent the agency from influencing the results of the midterm elections to the U.S. Congress, which took place in November 2018, The Washington Post notes.

According to HSE professor Dmitry Evstafiev, the statement by Donald Trump is in fact a recognition by the US authorities at the highest level of the fact of conducting military cyber operations against Russian organizations.

“This is quite dangerous, because it means that the United States will politically legalize cyber attacks against the structures of other countries that they do not like. This is actually a further lowering of the threshold of force actions against opponents, ”the expert emphasized.

According to the political scientist, Trump, recognizing the cyberattack and speaking about his measures against Russia, thus wants to earn more political points before the upcoming elections.

“Now, under his leadership, the country is spreading at the seams. For the reason that he has no agenda and economic growth, Trump is trying to position himself as a politician who is opposed to Russia. In addition, this is the only issue with which at least a minimal internal consensus can be achieved in America, ”Yevstafyev explained.

Konstantin Blokhin, specialist of the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agrees with him. According to the expert, with his admission, Trump seeks to show that he is pursuing an aggressive policy against Russia.

"Given the internal political struggle, the protests in the United States, Trump wants to prove himself a strong leader, and therefore made such a statement," said the expert.

Mixed signals

It is worth noting that during the 2016 presidential election campaign, Barack Obama did say that the assumptions about any external influence on US elections are not serious.

“No serious person can even suggest that the results of the American election can be falsified in any way. Part of the reason is that they are too decentralized, as well as in the number of votes. There is no evidence that this happened in the past or that it will happen now, ”Obama said on October 18, 2016 during a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in the White House’s Rose Garden.

  • Barack Obama at a press conference at the White House
  • © Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

A statement by the then head of the White House was made a month before the vote in the presidential election, in which, contrary to the forecasts of political scientists and opinion polls, Donald Trump won instead of Clinton.

However, after the victory and the inauguration of the Republican, the leaders of the American special services from the Obama team announced signs of Russia's interference in the democratic process in order to influence the election results in favor of Trump.

In a June 2017 congressional hearing, Jay Johnson, who served as Obama’s secretary of state under Obama, said the U.S. leadership had avoided direct accusations of interference in order not to question the legitimacy of the election.

“We were extremely concerned that we did not have the impression that we were taking sides in these elections, wedging ourselves into an extremely fierce election campaign or taking measures to deligitize the election process and undermine its integrity,” Johnson quoted The New York newspaper as saying Times

As a result, statements about Moscow’s “interference” in the election led to the fact that in 2017 the US Department of Justice launched an investigation into the “ties” of Donald Trump’s election headquarters with Russia, which was conducted by a commission led by special prosecutor Robert Muller.

The investigation ended in March 2019, and a report was released following its results, in which Muller noted that no ties were established between Trump's entourage and the Kremlin in two years of investigation.

For all this, the report emphasized that the fact of Russia's interference in the election process was not called into question.

Endless interventions

In April 2020, a Senate intelligence committee issued a report stating that the conclusions of the US intelligence community about Russia's "interference" in the 2016 US presidential election are correct. At the same time, the report, the purpose of which was to verify the conclusions of statements by US special services from 2017, was published with a large number of notes, which made it difficult to verify its authenticity.

In the document, US senators blamed the alleged interference on the Russian authorities, and also accused Moscow in advance of preparing another “interference” in the US presidential election in 2020.

  • FBI Headquarters
  • Reuters
  • © Gary Cameron

The Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that such allegations are unproven and are used in the United States as a means to discredit political opponents. This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, other Russian diplomats and politicians at the federal level.

Konstantin Blokhin, in an interview with RT, noted that political forces in the US interpret the topic of "interference" in different ways.

“Trump’s predecessor as US president used the theme of Russia to explain Trump’s election victory after Clinton’s unexpected defeat. For the Democrats, this “interference” is total, due to which changes are taking place in the US internal political system, ”the expert said.

In turn, Trump recognizes the fact of sanctioning cyberattacks as a retaliatory action, explaining this by preventing interference with the congressional elections in 2018. However, in any case, the ultimate goal of these statements is to create a reason to contain Russia, the political scientist added.

"The American elite is trying to demonstrate that the United States has become a victim of actions on the part of Russia in order to demonize it and, accordingly, increase pressure on Moscow," Blokhin concluded.