Special to WorldTribune.com
The Trump administration’s threats to impose sanctions and conduct retaliatory cyberattacks on any nations meddling in the U.S. midterm elections appear to have worked.
Asked at the White House on Nov. 7 if there was any sign of Russian or Chinese meddling, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “No. We’re going to make a full report.”
The president praised the efforts of security, law enforcement and intelligence agencies for working to prevent any meddling while criticizing the Obama administration for its inaction against Russia for trying to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
“Unlike the previous administration, we’ve done a lot of work on that issue,” he said. “We’ve spent a lot of time. It gets very little coverage in the papers. And we have been working very hard on China and Russia and everybody else looking into our elections or meddling with our elections.”
Along with threatening sanctions and other retaliatory action, the White House directed months of government security, intelligence and law enforcement efforts to block and respond to foreign election meddling, former National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told security correspondent Bill Gertz.
Fleitz, a Geostrategy-Direct Strategy Team member and now president at the Center for Security Policy, said he participated in interagency meetings on the problem at the White House and noted that policies were adopted that would hold any nations or non-state hackers accountable for any cyberattacks or influence operations targeting the elections.
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