The Biden administration has accused Russia of carrying out a sustained disinformation campaign targeted at American voters and meant to influence the outcome of November’s presidential elections.
In its most direct accusation of election meddling to date, the US government accused the state-financed RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and other Russian state-backed media of spearheading a covert campaign of disinformation promoting pro-Kremlin views laundered through their online and television networks.
The treasury department also sanctioned the RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, and nine other employees of the network over the campaign of disinformation around the elections. Simonyan is a “central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts” the department said.
It also accused RT of spending millions of dollars to “recruit unwitting American influencers” in order to spread a message meant to undermine confidence in the US elections system and US foreign policy goals, including support for Ukraine.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, condemned the alleged disinformation campaign during a meeting of the justice department’s election threats task force, which included the FBI’s director, Christopher Wray, and other senior law enforcement leaders.
In a statement, Garland said that the US would charge two employees of Russia’s RT network with money laundering and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. RT was officially declared a foreign agent in the US in 2017.
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