Nearly a dozen Democrats led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to Mnuchin Thursday urging the Treasury Department to impose sanctions based on the intelligence community's public statement last month detailing concerns about election interference from Russia, China and Iran. The intelligence community's top election security official William Evanina issued a statement on August 7 saying that China "prefers" an outcome where President Donald Trump is not reelected, while stating Russia was actively working to "denigrate" Biden. In the statement, Evanina accused pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach of "spreading claims about corruption" to undermine Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party. Ten days after the intelligence community's statement, Trump retweeted Russian propaganda that contained material released earlier this year by Derkach. Trump has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help his campaign, an assessment long confirmed by both the intelligence community and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Source: CNN September 03, 2020 15:33 UTC