Obama Reportedly Setting Russian Sanctions

Russia's possible involvement in the 2016 election has been a controversial matter since President-elect Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. As a result, President Obama and bipartisan leaders have joined forces to condemn Russia and launch investigations to uncover whether or not Russia interfered in the elections. They cite the release of John Podesta's emails through Wikileaks as an example of Russian Intelligence intervention. Said package against Russia is also reported to make things difficult for the Trump administration to unravel.

It's now being reported that the Obama administration is completing a package of sanctions and diplomatic censure against Russia. This comes from the Washington Post reporting that an official announcement could come as early as this week, and that U.S. officials informed them that the package would include covert cyber operations.

Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he has "no confidence that President Trump will bring about any sanctions on Russia. I’m more worried that he’s going to repeal the sanctions we already have than impose new ones. So I think the administration ought to do what it’s going to do ASAP.”

A U.S. Official told the Washington Post that “Part of the goal here is to make sure that we have as much of the record public or communicated to Congress in a form that would be difficult to simply walk back." Another official added that “As much as I am concerned about what happened to us in the election, I am also concerned about what will happen to us in the future, I am firmly convinced that the Russians and others will say, ‘That worked pretty well in 2016, so let’s keep going.’ We have elections every two years in this country.”