White House Drafting Sanctions Order to Punish Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections

The White House draft order says that sanctions can be imposed on one-third of the country’s largest business structures meddling in US elections. The White House is drafting an executive order that would authorize President Trump to sanction foreigners and business structures for meddling in US elections, Washington Post reports with reference to the draft document dated August, 8. As the newspaper notes Washington is planning to introduce a category of offense “election interference”, which includes “Internet-based disinformation efforts”. The eight-page draft order specifies that sanctions may impose on “10 of the 30 largest business entities” in a country whose government has interfered in an election, says WP. The authors of the document especially indicate the Soviet Union attempts to interfere in U.S. presidential elections of 1968 and 1984. However, it is noted that there is no evidence that any foreign state influenced the outcome of any US election. Trump has been under increasing pressure from his advisers to condemn Russia’s aggression, said current and former administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. The other newspaper interlocutor emphasized that the document is a draft and that it could change. At the same time a former Pentagon official Michael Carpenter who worked on Russia policy for the Obama administration thinks that the draft order “looks much more like a cover-your-behind exercise to show the administration is doing something when in fact it doesn’t oblige them to do much of anything”.